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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24207571">Bound</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merileigh/pseuds/Merileigh'>Merileigh</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Bound [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>GreedFall (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Continuation, F/M, Fantasy, Post-Canon, Romance</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 15:47:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>100,687</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24207571</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merileigh/pseuds/Merileigh</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The voice of the god went through me, and I felt my heart falter in its wake. That voice was like a force of nature, like a wave or the wind, but… But the words were wrong. For his own immortality?</p><p>No. No, that wasn’t why Constantin had done this.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Constantin d'Orsay/De Sardet</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Bound [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1619806</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>59</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. If You Are Gone</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <i>Whose side am I on, whose side am I?<br/>
Whose side am I on, whose side am I?<br/>
</i>
  </p>
  <p>
    <i>And the fever begins to spread<br/>
From my heart down to my legs<br/>
But the room is so quiet (oh)<br/>
And although I wasn’t losing my mind<br/>
It was a call that was so sublime<br/>
And the room is too quiet (oh, the fever!)</i>
  </p>
</div><p>“<i>Why</i>? Why have you done this?”</p><p>“But for you,” he said. “For us. So that we may live free at last.”</p><p>“This makes no sense. Constantin, it’s madness!”</p><p>“You don’t understand because you’re still attached to the old world. This old, dying world which to survive has betrayed, used, and manipulated us, and would not have hesitated to kill us.”</p><p>“Perhaps, but—”</p><p>“I’ve seen death, Cousin. And I understood the vanity of it all—my father’s ruses, just so he could earn more power, the political bowing and scraping to preserve corrupted nations. I have been offered unrivalled power allowing me to get rid of this. To send the old world back to its inevitable death and to build something new here…something unique!
“And this new world is my gift to you. …You and I could be its new gods—the immortal and benevolent monarchs.”</p><p>“<i>HE HIMSELF IS THE INCARNATION OF THE OLD WORLD HE IS SPEAKING OF. HE HAS ITS VICES AND ITS POISON. FOR HIS OWN IMMORTALITY, HE’S PREPARED TO DESTROY EVERYTHING AROUND HIM…TO BREAK MILLENNIA OF CYCLES.</i>”</p><p>The voice of the god went through me, and I felt my heart falter in its wake. That voice was like a force of nature, like a wave or the wind, but… But the words were wrong. For his own immortality?</p><p>No. No, that wasn’t why Constantin had done this.</p><p>As soon as the thought came to me, I saw them both with new eyes. <i>En on mil frichtimen</i>, the god who had been driving me to kill my cousin, might have been a prince or a governor. Ancient, far-seeing, and beyond my understanding, yes—but he had manipulated me. He was manipulating me still.</p><p>“<i>I EMPLORE YOU, FLESH OF MY LAND, THINK OF ALL THE LIVES THAT WILL COME TO AN END TO FEED HIS PRIDE.</i>”</p><p>“Don’t listen to this old god,” Constantin said. “He’s like all the others after all, clinging to life.”</p><p>And Constantin. He had changed so much since the bonding ritual. Gone mad, I had thought. But here in the sanctuary, where the air moved strangely and the <i>Nádaig baro</i> followed his commands, I couldn’t believe that any longer. Somehow my cousin had found a way to become a god and was on the edge of accomplishing it. In the moment after he spoke, I looked at him and saw how different he was. The marks were like a mask over his face; they had been all I’d seen before, the few times we had met him in the throne room and, later, when we’d surprised him at the stone circle in Cwenvár.</p><p>Now I saw that the hollows in his cheeks were gone. He had always been too thin for his height, but not any longer. He was broader, muscled like a fighter, and taller. But the changes went deeper than his appearance. Almost for as long as I could remember, Constantin had acted out, jokingly or at times in anger. He might be sincere and earnest sometimes, but he had rarely shown that face to anyone aside from me, when we were alone. It wasn’t until I’d been older that I’d learned to call the feeling that he carried with him behind the face he wore despair. There was no sign of that despair in him now.</p><p>“All you have to do is to bind yourself, here, with me,” he said, offering me his knife. “And we will be gods together, forever.”</p><p>The hilt of the knife felt strange in my hand—or perhaps it was my arm that felt as though it didn’t belong to me, as though I was separated from my body. Constantin’s right hand when he held it out to me was already bloody, and I could see the old scars crossing his palm. How many times had he done this to himself?</p><p>I realized I was looking at his hand like I could read the answer there on his palm, in his blood. He was asking me to choose. He had no other weapon, and he stood there in front of me open and unguarded, looking at me like… I couldn’t finish the thought; my mind wouldn’t form the words. If I lunged for him, I could kill him before he could stop me. I could slip the knife up under his cuirass. My hand knew the angle that would find his heart.</p><p>I felt my own heart then like it was shrinking away from the point of the knife.</p><p>Come away with me, I wanted to say to him. We could leave and— But why speak such empty words? Even as I thought them, I knew there was nowhere for us to run. Constantin would not go back to the Congregation. The Coin Guard would kill us, or perhaps just kill me and ransom him to his father. The Bridge? I hadn’t told Constantin what I’d found in the caves beneath Hikmet, at first because I was afraid of what the knowledge would do to him and then because he’d kept himself so distant. But even with Asili dead, I would be a fool to trust Governor Burhan. The Nauts might take us, if I asked, but I knew they couldn’t hold out long against the Congregation, if the prince wanted us.</p><p>If I thought I could keep him alive, I would have tried to take Constantin to Dunncas. But how long could Dunncas turn a deaf ear to <i>en on mil frichtimen</i>? The god wouldn’t let Constantin live.</p><p>And those obstacles were just speculation. I knew Constantin would not leave the sanctuary.</p><p>Constantin took a breath. “Lily,” he said, and I met his eyes, unwillingly. “Do you know what they want from you?”</p><p><i>When you’re alone,</i> I heard the echo of his voice in my thoughts. He knew I was thinking of killing him.</p><p>And if I did, if I survived it—what then? What orders might come across the sea? What betrayals would they ask me to commit?</p><p>Why was I here?</p><p>I couldn’t have said in what moment I decided. Perhaps I had never been able to make any other choice. My hand was shaking when I put the knife against my palm and cut through the worn leather of my glove. I did it too quickly and used too much force, and the pain made me hiss through my teeth.</p><p>Constantin saw my hesitation when I closed my hand in a fist against my chest and came to me. “Come,” he said, reaching for my hand. I looked at him and couldn’t breathe around the tightness in my throat. The air seemed to have changed. When I had come into the sanctuary, it had seemed almost to be pulling me upward. During the whole long battle with the <i>Nádaig</i> I hadn’t been sure when I took a step if there would be rock underneath my feet or nothing at all. Now that pull had ceased, and I felt the ground more solid beneath me. Leaves and ash were drifting around us, hanging in the air.</p><p>Now it was the way that Constantin looked at me that made me feel disoriented and made me hesitate, even while I was putting my hand in his.</p><p>“Trust me,” he urged, softly.</p><p>His fingers closed around my left hand, and I felt blood spreading through my glove and the sharp pain in my palm. He pulled me against his chest with one arm across my back. We both wore armor, and I couldn’t feel his arm or his chest, only the pressure bringing us together. But I saw and felt his shoulders relax as he bent his head close to mine. I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding and rested my head on his shoulder, relieved even while I feared what might be coming. I could choose this, at least—to let Constantin live. And when I thought about what I might have done, I clung more tightly to every sign that he was alive and well, the solidity of him, his hand around mine, the sound of his breathing.</p><p>Constantin’s breath stirred the hairs on the back of my neck when he spoke.</p><p>“You won’t regret it, Cousin.”</p><p>I felt his attention turn elsewhere. And then the world tore itself apart around us with a sound too immense to be heard. It felt as though I was inside of it, caught in an invisible wave. Blinding white light glared through the tears in reality and swept away everything it touched, until Constantin was the only real thing left.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>I felt as though I had been sick, or in pain—so much pain that it drove all thought from my mind—and now I was well. Or perhaps it had been the weight of the air that had changed, pressing down on me with such force that I was crushed beneath it. I had a sense that I should have died, that I had been dying. But I was spared.</p><p>Not only that—I felt none of my wounds at all, not the cut across my palm, not the fierce ache in my hip where I’d hit the rocks after the <i>Nádaig baro</i> had caught me with a swipe of its huge claws or the beating I’d taken when we’d fought our way up the mountain. I remembered what Constantin had said about the ritual weeks ago, <i>I felt better than I’ve ever felt</i>, and I knew the truth of it then. I’d never felt as new as this.</p><p>Constantin’s hands were on my arms, and he held me away from him. His eyes were searching my face while I struggled to understand what had happened in that impossible span between this moment and the last one. “It worked,” he said in a hushed voice, and I looked up at him. His face was lit up in a way that I hadn’t seen it since we’d landed on Teer Fradee. I had lived to see that expression on his face, once. But the marks were still there, and when he realized where my eyes had gone, he brought a hand up to touch his cheek.</p><p>“If that’s the price…” he said. Underneath the elation that made me want to toss back my head and laugh, or grab Constantin and swing him around, I felt my stomach clenching with disappointment. I felt these things so strongly that it took me a moment to realize that they weren’t mine. They weren’t my emotions. They were Constantin’s.</p><p>“Constantin—” I started, but he had raised his hand. I forgot what I had been about to say when I felt the pressure of his touch, but above my head. I started to bring my own hand up before I realized I still wore my gloves. As I tried to pull them off with unsteady hands, Constantin took my elbows, one after the other, and worked on them himself, gently easing the glove off my injured hand. When he had gotten that hand free, he ran his thumb over my palm. The cut was there, the edges still open, but it had stopped bleeding. I reached up with my other hand to feel what convincingly felt like wood—branches, like those that grew from the heads of the islanders, spreading out from the crown of my head. They were impossibly tall; I had to stretch my arm almost as far as it would go to feel their tips.</p><p>Constantin’s eyes followed my hand upward. “Lily,” he said then, meeting my eyes, suddenly urgent. I felt his hand close around my left hand. “I know it’s so much to take in. It seems unreal. But you’re so strong.” He laughed, once. “You’re going to be magnificent. –Just imagine what we could do together. What we <i>can</i> do, now.”</p><p>“Wait for me,” he said. He touched my cheek. His fingers were warm, almost hot, and I realized how cold I must be. “There are so many things I haven’t been able to tell you.”
He backed away from me several steps and turned before I could form my scattered thoughts into a question. Behind me, the <i>Nádaig</i> moved to follow him. I felt the presence of them like white hot flares in my consciousness, like two miniature suns. They stirred the air as they passed me—and that breath of air on my cheek was all it took to sweep me away.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>I was the lightning-struck tree. I was the forest around it, breathing out now as the sun was lowering. I was the soil holding the day’s warmth and the cool waters tumbling down the side of the mountain. I was the mountain—old and solid, rooted deep—and its red-hot heart that churned far below. It felt as real as the visions had. But I wasn’t a tree or a seed; I was everywhere and nowhere all at once. There was nothing left of me. I felt my panic, but I had no heartbeat or breath, no muscles to tense. There was a feeling of something vast moving that hadn’t moved in ages, and then Constantin was calling to me.</p><p>
  <i>Lily, I’m here—you’re safe. You can let go.</i>
</p><p>His voice came from nowhere, and I had no way to hear it. But it was his voice, as clear as if he was standing next to me. I felt only confidence from him.</p><p>
  <i>You have to give yourself to it. Let go.</i>
</p><p>His voice faded, and I felt myself suspended again, part of everything but wholly nothing. I was still but also ceaselessly moving as plants and animals breathed in and out, and lived and died. If I tried to hold onto one thing for too long, I felt my nothingness again, and a shudder went through me. But always Constantin was there to calm me. And while I was there, the light aged, the shadows grew, and the sun sank below the horizon.</p><p>And the night! I felt the night air like I was naked beneath the stars, and instead of fearing being so vulnerable, I thrilled to the touch of shadows and silvery light. I was every secret thing that hid in the dark—and everything that shone brightly only after the sun went down. There were flares of white fire across the island. I saw them and felt them at the same time; they felt like starlight felt, like the first cool touch of a silver chain on my skin. When I reached out to one of the fires with something I imagined to be a hand, I felt as though I was being bathed in winter air. There was a <i>Nádaig</i> in the heart of the white flames, and she shivered as I passed through and shook herself, curling her tentacles around one another like a person rubbing her hands together.</p><p>A fire greater than all the others—many fires together—burned near the top of the mountain, and without thinking to move, I was there in the trampled, muddy earth and the air that vibrated with cries and shouts and the crackle of magic. All at once, I remembered who I had been that morning and the unlikely army I’d brought with me up the mountain. I remembered my companions—and I saw their faces, Vasco and Síora, pale and lined with weariness as they fought, letting others retreat down the path behind them. Blood ran from a cut on Vasco’s brow, and when he had a breath of space, he brought the back of his arm up to wipe it away from his eye. Farther up the slope, one of the <i>Nádaig baro</i> lay dead. The other was a great shadow over them, atop the rocks, and in its throat burned white fire.</p><p>Vasco pushed Síora into a crevice in the rock and fell in behind her just as the <i> Nádaig</i> roared and the night went blinding white around them. As the smell of scorched rock rose into the air and their vision danced with gray spots, I saw—felt?—Síora grab Vasco’s shoulder. She said something to him, and he let out a heavy breath and shook his head. He started to speak, but she interrupted, urgent, fierce. He relented; he couldn’t say anything to stop her. He levered himself out of their shelter, then turned to help her back onto the path. His hand grasped her arm for a moment longer, until she let go and stepped back, and the moment came for him to leave.</p><p>Síora stood alone against the <i>Nádaig baro</i>. But I was there with her when she slid her palm down the blade of her rapier, and knelt, pressing her bleeding hand to the earth while the <i>Nádaig</i> stood back as if it was waiting. She shouted, and though I couldn’t hear the words I felt the pull of them. She was drawing on the island’s power. She meant to become one of the guardians. Even as I realized it, I saw ghostly flames kindling to life around her hand and growing to engulf her where she knelt.</p><p>No—that couldn’t happen. I wouldn’t let it happen.</p><p>I had a body again, and for a moment, the world pitched like a ship in a storm wind. I wasn’t sure if I was standing or lying on the ground. But then I felt the uneven pressure of rock against my shoulder and hand and legs. I was lying on the floor of the sanctuary, and I was alone. Constantin was standing outside the entrance. Below, on the mountainside, I could feel the cold flare of the <i>Nádaig baro</i> and the smaller fire that was Síora, burning herself up.</p><p>“Constantin, stop!” I tried to shout as I pushed myself up to my knees. The words came out thin and cracked, but somehow he heard me. I sensed him hesitate.</p><p>But he wouldn’t be fast enough to stop her.</p><p>“<i>Enough!</i>” This time I did shout. I felt the word swelling in me, and it burst out as sound and a force that rolled off of me and away, through the rock of the mountain. And I sensed the lights that burned all across the island going out in a wave that spread from the sanctuary to the shoreline, not only the bright <i>Nádaig</i> and Síora but the lesser lights of people and animals as well. The night that had been as alive and vivid as day to me was truly dark now, and quiet.</p><p>In the silence, I heard Constantin’s footsteps echoing off the rock. And when he came into the great, vaulted space of the sanctuary, and he saw me where I knelt, I knew I wasn’t ready. I felt as though my edges were disintegrating and I might spill out of myself again into the night. I felt the rush of his exhilaration speeding my pulse and—and desire, a sweet tension between my legs. I wasn’t sure if it was mine or his.</p><p>He stopped before he reached me, our eyes met, and I knew that he could feel what I was feeling.</p><p>I wasn’t ready for this.</p><p>He had just started to say something when the sanctuary unformed itself in front of my eyes, and when the world had form and shape and color again, I was somewhere else. I was still on my knees, but in mud this time. There was light, almost as if it was daytime, but it was weaker than sunlight. The ghostly flames I had seen before were burning all around me on the bare earth. That was where the light was coming from. In that light, the colors were all wrong, and the shadows moved like living things. I reached out and put my hand into one of the flames and felt it lapping cool as water against my skin.</p><p>I hadn’t realized I wasn’t alone until I saw another hand reaching for mine.</p><p>“My child… What happened?”</p><p>The hand passed through mine, and I could see the ground and the flames through his arm.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Lyrics and the chapter title are from "Breath of Life" by Florence + the Machine.</p><p>The scenes after Lily and Constantin's transformation were inspired by "Origins" by Ninja Tracks. I'm so in love with this music! If you only listen to one song I mention in the notes, make it <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PJtorOtiPE">this one</a>.</p><p>Normally I would listen to the soundtrack of the game for inspiration, but I don't really have a strong emotional connection to Greedfall's soundtrack. I was thinking about that while I was writing this chapter, and at first it seemed like a huge wasted opportunity on the part of the studio that there isn't any music on the soundtrack that conveys a sense of discovery or wonder or beauty, like so much of the music in Avatar (the movie) or in Horizon: Zero Dawn. Then I realized that maybe that isn't the feeling de Sardet is having at all as she/he travels through Teer Fradee. The tracks that I remember most from the soundtrack are "Death is Upon Us" (the ambient music in Serene) and "Human Nature" (the music that plays during the coup and when you're going up against a human baddie), which are both really ominous. And actually, I said I don't have a strong emotional connection to the soundtrack, but that's not entirely true. "Human Nature" really had my heart pounding during the coup.</p><p>Given everything that happens, I could imagine that de Sardet is more focused on potential threats while they're traveling, instead of noticing how beautiful the island is. And I don't remember a single line of dialogue she/he has that mentions the beauty of the island. At this point in the series, and in the canon, Constantin has more of a connection to the island than de Sardet does, so it's going to be interesting to see how that plays out as they both grow and change (says the author of the story...^^).</p><p>In my head, "Origins" is that theme for discovery and wonder. Which is why you should go listen to it already! I first heard this track in Dertrava's video <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qpRXcvwrYc">My Dear Cousin, Part 1</a>. If you ship Constantin/f!de Sardet, you should give both parts a watch. The editing is excellent, and the way Dertrava uses this music still gives me goosebumps.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Ghost Fires</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the strange half-light that was coming off the white flames, I could barely make out Petrus’s features. When I looked up at him, his expression changed from one of concern to shock, as if he had been the one to see a ghost. He was dead, I realized. He took a step back to study me, and I could see through his body the rocks behind him and the flames coming off them.</p>
<p><i>I’m sorry,</i> I wanted to say. <i>I never wanted this.</i> But nothing I could say would change what had happened or that I was the one responsible. I had brought my companions here and, in the end, I had chosen Constantin.</p>
<p>I opened my hands on my lap reflexively, as though if I only reached for the words, they would come, but before I found anything to say that would begin to approach what I owed him, I heard another voice, this one farther away. “You aren’t dead.”</p>
<p>Aphra. I could barely make out her shape as a distortion, a bending of the air. She was kneeling beside their bodies. She had died sitting with her back against the rocks at a curve in the path to Anemhaid. Her rifle lay a few feet away, and one of her hands was stretched out toward it as if it had been blown away from her. Petrus had fallen a few feet up the path. He lay on his back, his arms spread out from his sides and one of his legs twisted awkwardly beneath him. His armor and half his face beneath his helmet were covered in mud, when he had always kept himself impeccably neat in life. There was something wrong with their bodies, and it took me a moment to realize it was the light, or the lack of it. The light from the fires did not touch them; their bodies were in shadow.</p>
<p>“You aren’t dead,” Aphra’s ghost repeated. The words were an accusation this time. She came toward me and bent down in front of me, close enough that I could see the lines of her frown and the way her sharp eyes examined me from my hands on my lap to the branches growing from my head. I could almost feel a prickling in them, the branches, though they didn’t truly feel like a part of me. “You went through with the ritual,” she said. “With him.”</p>
<p>It wasn’t a question, but I answered nonetheless. “Yes.”</p>
<p>She was staring down at my hands, and when I looked down with her, I saw white fire welling up from the cut across my left palm. It pooled and flickered there before slipping down the side of my hand and down my leg to flare up brightly on the ground. My hand twitched, making the flames jump.</p>
<p>“<i>Why</i>?”</p>
<p>I heard an echo of my own voice in that demand for an answer and suddenly felt cold. “Aphra…”</p>
<p>“No. Tell me why. You knew he was mad. You knew he had to be <i>stopped</i>. –We all trusted you.”</p>
<p>“He isn’t mad.” It was the realization that had made me hesitate in the sanctuary and the one thing I was certain of. I looked from Aphra up to Petrus, who had his face pointed toward me, though his expression was far away. “I… If I had known, I would have come by myself. I wouldn’t have put you at risk.”</p>
<p>“You would have betrayed us from the start.”</p>
<p>“I would have tried to bring him back,” I said, feeling how inadequate the words were even as they came out of my mouth. It had been too late for that when we’d come to Anemhaid. It had been too late from the moment Constantin had taken his first steps off the ship and been handed a tainted potion. Aphra, perhaps more than anyone, understood the horror I felt when I thought of the way we had been so callously used as subjects in Asili’s experiment. But she couldn’t know that I still tasted bitterness and bile on the back of my tongue when I thought of her former master or that all these weeks later I felt enough hatred for him and for Burhan that I would have started a war with Hikmet and been happy for it.</p>
<p>And Aphra, as quick and inquisitive as she was, couldn’t understand how it had felt to face Constantin after so much time spent worrying over his strange behavior, to have him sound…not like himself, not exactly, but like the way I had wanted him to be when I’d been younger, the year my uncle was hunting a husband for me. Constantin had spoken against it so often when we’d been alone. I had kept his words close and imagined him saying them to his father whenever a page came to my door and it seemed as though that day would be the day I would be sold off for the Congregation.</p>
<p>I had come to Anemhaid wanting to protect my cousin, and knowing that I might have to kill him. Instead, I had found that he no longer needed my protection. And when he had put the knife in my hand, I had realized that I knew nothing.</p>
<p>Aphra made a sound of disgust low in her throat. She started to rock back on her heels to stand but stopped when Petrus put his hand on her shoulder. “It’s done, my child—”</p>
<p>“I am <i>not</i> your child.”</p>
<p>Petrus continued over her without pausing, as if he’d anticipated her response. “And casting blame at this point is a decidedly useless endeavor.” I met his eyes when I looked up at him. He wore the expression that had become familiar to me after we’d gone to Vignamri together, that said he saw something that grieved him whenever he looked at me. “No one keeps score better than a priest,” he said, with an attempt at a wry smile. “But I find that the game seems like nothing more than a shallow pastime when one is confronted with one’s own death.</p>
<p>“—Which, I suppose, means that Cornelia has won,” he added to himself. He looked at me again and reached out to touch his fingers to my temple, carefully, hovering over my skin like he was blessing me. I was shaking my head and only realized it when I felt the coolness of his fingers on and beneath my skin. “I don’t blame you, my child.”</p>
<p>“You would be right to,” I said.</p>
<p>“Trust me when I say, my dear, that I am far more concerned now with the tally of my own sins. I am—<i>was</i>—an old man, but naïve enough to think I had a few years left to me before I would face the Enlightened. Time enough for a few good deeds.”</p>
<p>Beside me on the ground, Aphra jerked and rose to her feet as if she’d only just realized she was kneeling at the feet of a bishop. She said nothing else to either of us but went to stand again beside her body, her head bowed and her back toward us.</p>
<p>“It is…” Petrus continued, “fairly miraculous that I have died where Saint Matheus lived and died. Perhaps he walked this very path.”</p>
<p>To visit the god that I had killed, along with my cousin. Petrus was trying too hard to comfort me, and I couldn’t fathom why. I looked away from him and watched the flames welling up from my palm instead. And when I cupped my hand and collected them there, an idea came to me. It was such an obviously impossible thing that I never would have spoken the words aloud before. But I owed it to both of them to try.</p>
<p>“What if I could bring you back?” I said.</p>
<p>He said nothing for a moment. When I looked up at his face, I saw the faint impression of a drawn brow and a frown against the sunless sky that deepened from gray to an unbroken blackness above us. “There is no magic that can raise the dead, my child.”</p>
<p>“No magic that Thélème has discovered. But the magic is different here.” I took a breath. “And I am…,” I started, but I couldn’t find the words when I was confronted with this new problem of defining myself. <i>We will be gods together, forever,</i> Constantin had said. But I felt only imperfectly human and small and lost.</p>
<p>“Please, Father. Help me try.”</p>
<p>When I knelt beside his body, I could see the wound that had killed him, a deeper shadow where a heavy blow to the head from a tail or a clawed foot had staved in his helmet so badly that the metal had cracked. Blood darkened his hair and skin at the nape of his neck. Behind me, Aphra asked, her voice full of scorn, “Are you going to magic his skull closed again?”</p>
<p>Petrus made an impatient noise, but I wanted the pain that came with her words. If my determination failed me, that pain might see me through.</p>
<p>“Tell me what to do,” I said to catch Petrus’s attention again. “You know I’m not a mage.” Now that I was alert to it, I could feel the prickling that I associated with magic under my skin. In Sérène, I’d rarely felt it, but the feeling had been nearly constant, insistent, here on the island, except when we were in one of the cities and sleeping under a roof. At times my stomach had felt too full of jumping, fluttering magic for me to eat and it had kept me uneasily awake late into the night. After I’d let loose a burst of magic in a panic when we’d been caught by a pack of tenlans in the depths of one of the islanders’ sacred caves, Petrus had offered multiple times to teach me to control the talent I’d inherited, to finish the lessons he’d started when I’d been a child. But I’d refused him. I didn’t want the feeling of something else living under my skin. And I didn’t want to think about what it meant—that I’d never been who I thought I was.</p>
<p>The air wavered as he lowered himself to sit across from me on the other side of his body. “You will have to concentrate, my child.” He hesitated, and when he finally continued, his voice took on an instructive tone. “The fundamental act of magic is taking the natural energies around you and turning them to the ends you desire. In Thélème, we use the sun’s light, which is abundant and contains more power than the uninitiated would guess. The islanders use the earth, fed by the volcano. Here—” he said, and paused to survey the sky, “the sun has left us. You will have to find a source. –If you focus on the flames, what do you feel?”</p>
<p>I did as he asked, and the flames around us seemed to grow larger and brighter as if they were being fed on something instead of springing impossibly from the bare earth. They pooled together on the ground and split apart into flits of fire that jumped into the air and disappeared, and I had the sense that I could control their movement if I tried. I could make a conflagration or smother them down to nothing.</p>
<p>“I can control them,” I said. “But I don’t understand how. Or where they come from.”</p>
<p>Petrus’s eyes had been fixed on the flame I held, which was burning cool on my palm, but he looked up at me when I spoke. “Every energy has its affinity,” he said. “These flames look and move like fire, but…” He gestured toward my hand.</p>
<p>“They burn cold, not hot.”</p>
<p>“And they feel?”</p>
<p>“Like water, or cold air.”</p>
<p>He said nothing, and I knew that he wanted me to go beyond that. “They feel…cleansing, like water. And they feel…” I lost the words and reached out to pass my hand through one of the flames that was burning near my knee. I felt it flutter against my palm. “Just now I remembered what it felt like to go to bed at the palace in Sérène in the winter. The fire was too small to keep the room warm all night, but there was nothing better than feeling that chill creeping in and knowing that I had a pile of blankets waiting for me. …They feel like good sleeping weather,” I said, feeling as though I had completely missed the mark at which he’d tried to aim me.</p>
<p>But Petrus only nodded, the indistinct curve of a small, distracted smile on his face, and reached out himself to touch one of the ghost fires. His hand seemed to blur and become part of the flames. “Good sleeping weather,” he repeated. Despite the circumstances, I thought he might have been amused.</p>
<p>“If I may?” he asked. The bending of the air above his body told me that he was holding out one of his hands. He nodded toward my left hand, and I held it out, judging by the chill on my skin when I had placed my hand in his. “If you’ll permit an old man his theories… I believe you have turned yourself into a source of magic, my child, and that <i>this</i>”—I felt a faint upward pressure on the back of my hand carrying its flame, a ghost’s touch—“is what we need.</p>
<p>“But the effect may not be what you had hoped.”</p>
<p>“What do you mean?” I asked.</p>
<p>“We will try in a moment. But before we do, you must understand that whatever happens is the way of things here. We can capture light, or fire, and use it. But we cannot change the nature of what it is.” He looked at me until I nodded, and then he brought his other hand up to hover over the fire burning in my palm.</p>
<p>“You are not an evil person, my child. Forgive yourself.” The words opened a pit of dread in my stomach, but before I could move, he had lowered his hand. I felt something like I had felt when I had shouted on the mountaintop, a force welling up in me. The flames around us grew and spread, veins of fire racing away in every direction and, when they had calmed and I turned back to him, Petrus was gone.</p>
<p>Aphra hissed through her teeth and moved closer before she remembered that she hated me and stopped. “What happened to him?” she asked, and her voice was strained by an emotion that I couldn’t name with certainty.</p>
<p>“He’s gone back to the earth,” I said and knew it was true in the same moment, the same way I had known the moment the last of the sun’s light left Anemhaid or what starlight felt like. “He’s in the soul of all things.”</p>
<p>“What?”</p>
<p>“The soul of all things,” I repeated. I was struggling to understand it myself. Where had those words come from? “It’s—I don’t know—it’s…life, and the potential for life. –I don’t have the words for it.”</p>
<p>“Energy,” Aphra said. She pressed her palms together, then rubbed her hands over her forearms. She was looking at the fires that burned around us on bare rock, but I had the sense that she didn’t really see them. “I was wondering…” She trailed off.</p>
<p>“Wondering what?” I asked carefully and stood, so we could speak on the same level, if she would speak to me. As I did, I felt fire running down my palm and dripping off the tips of my fingers and raised my hand to hold it against my chest.</p>
<p>She looked at me, and though she was just a suggestion of a form drawn on the air, her eyes somehow looked as dark as I remembered them being when she was alive. She pressed her lips together, and I thought she wouldn’t say anything else. But then she folded her arms across her chest and said, “I was wondering if these fires are energy, at their essence. –There are scholars who theorize that every object we can see and touch, including ourselves, is made up of smaller, moving particles. They believe there are fields of energy around us that we cannot see.”</p>
<p>“It sounds like magic,” I said, hearing Petrus’s voice in my head again.</p>
<p>“Even a priest can stumble on the truth sometimes.”</p>
<p>I had never seen Aphra carry a blade, but she didn’t need to with that tongue. I almost smiled. Almost.</p>
<p>“And I’ve wondered what science would say about ghosts,” she continued after a moment, quieter now. “If someone had told me I’d one day be looking down at my body—or speaking or thinking after I’d died—I would have called them an idiot, or worse.” She did smile, but there was a sharp edge to it. “Probably worse.”</p>
<p>“And now?”</p>
<p>“And now,” she echoed, “…I don’t want to stay here, alone. Will you…?” She unbent one arm to gesture toward the flame I carried, and I felt my heart constrict when I realized what she was asking.</p>
<p>“Yes. Of course.”</p>
<p>I held out my hand to her when she stood across from me, and even though the words would be little comfort to either of us, I said, “I am sorry that I led you to this.” Her chin jerked in a nod. She wouldn’t forgive me, but I wouldn’t ask that of her.</p>
<p>Her fingers were cool on my skin when she put her hand in mine. The fire dimmed for a moment like it was trapped under glass, then grew until there was no distinction between Aphra’s hand and the flame. This time I kept my eyes on Aphra’s as I felt that force that was too large to contain moving through me and the flames grew brighter. But still, it happened so quickly—there was the suggestion of her eyes flicking up to meet mine, then the light shifted and she was gone.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>I couldn’t leave their bodies that way. But when I tried to touch Aphra’s arm, my hand passed through skin and muscle and bone without meeting any resistance. I stared at my arm where it met hers and disappeared and felt cool mud on my palm, and I realized that their bodies weren’t in this place. They were in the other world, the real world, the one that I had left.</p>
<p>Was I trapped here? I had to close my eyes and breathe against the panic that threatened to overwhelm me.</p>
<p>It was the thought that I had to bury them that gave me something to grab onto. I had to bury them. Then there was the problem of how, when their bodies were in the other world, and I was in this one. I rubbed my hand against my breeches to get rid of some of the mud and rubbed the back of it across my wet cheeks. I reached for Aphra with both hands—perhaps I could push through into the world I’d come from—but when I did, the ghost fire in my hand caught on the sleeve of her kaftan. As quick as my caught breath, the fire spread to cover her, burning white like the heart of a real fire, but cold enough that I shivered. Aphra’s body didn’t seem to be burning in the real world; she still looked whole in the heart of the fire. But a moment later, her face started to crumble in on itself, the fabric of her tunic sagged, and her body was gone in a flurry of ash, leaving only the armor she’d worn behind.</p>
<p>When I could stand and I went to Petrus, I was ready—or I thought I was. But in a way, it was harder to watch him go. I had thought that I couldn’t trust him. I had been involved in enough of his scheming that I could easily imagine being the one watching for his subtle knife in my back one day. I had never asked him to tell me about my mother, what she had been like. I had never asked him about what he’d felt for her. I wasn’t angry with him. It still didn’t feel as though I’d lost my real mother, but like my old life had died since I’d come here, along with the only mother I’d known. I hadn’t truly been able to acknowledge Petrus’s betrayal, or his kindness.</p>
<p>There was only silence left, and eventually it grew too crowded with my thoughts. When I couldn't stay still any longer and started down the path, I saw other bodies on the mountainside. I went to each of them, beasts and people alike. Only the bodies of the beasts were left; their spirits—and I was sure now that they had spirits, fires of their own—had gone back to the earth when they died. I reached down to touch each of them in turn and moved on while their bodies were still burning to ash.</p>
<p>The men and women who had died during the battle were harder. Most of them recognized me, though some were too wrapped up in their grief to notice my face when I offered them my hand or touched them on the arm or shoulder. In a few of the islanders’ faces, I could see the realization of what I’d done, and those few were the hardest. Some of them I had to leave behind when they refused to touch me or let me touch them, and I could hear their keening as I went on to find others.</p>
<p>I found Síora still asleep in the shadow of the <i>Nádaig baro</i>. I had passed other sleepers on my way here—wounded, most of them, but still alive. Whatever I had done on the mountaintop to save Síora had put them to sleep, and they lay where they had fallen still.</p>
<p>It was still dark in the other world, but when I knelt beside her, I could see the puncture wounds on Síora’s left arm near her shoulder. The backs of her hands were bloody, but not with her own blood, and the cut on her palm had closed already. Her hair at her left temple was matted with dried blood, and I was reaching out reflexively to part it and look for a wound when I heard her speak behind me. “<i>Carants</i>?”</p>
<p>I started and turned and looked up to find her staring down at me, her brows drawn. “You—” she started, but then she stopped and looked at me again. “Are you dead?” she asked, her voice high and uncertain.</p>
<p>“No. I’m not.” I forced myself to look her in the eye when I said it.</p>
<p>“But this is Tir Anemen,” she said. It was a name I didn’t recognize. Then she added, “the place where those who have died go. Only spirits walk here.”</p>
<p>I had put my left hand down to catch myself when I turned and now, when I stood, she saw the white fire dripping from my hand. Her eyes went from my hand to the crown of branches on my head, and I watched her face as the understanding came, even as she didn’t want to believe it.</p>
<p>“What did you do?” she breathed. Her hands came up to cover her mouth.</p>
<p>“Síora, I’m sorry. I couldn’t kill him.” I reached out to her without thinking that she would see only the fire in my palm and what it meant.</p>
<p>She was backing away from me, shaking her head, and I felt each step like a blow. “I don’t understand—” she said. She wanted to say more, but her voice failed her. I thought I could hear the cry that started in her throat, but before it reached the air, Síora had vanished.</p>
<p>I heard the sound of rocks scrapping together behind me and turned to see her lying on the ground, separated from me by an invisible and indefinable something in the air. She had reached for her rapier and was dragging it to her, and I could hear her ragged breaths as she fought with herself not to cry. She pushed herself up, avoiding putting any weight on her injured hand, and when she saw the others, the <i>Nádaig baro</i> and all the beasts asleep around her all across the mountainside, she gasped, and the tears she’d been fighting spilled over and slid down her cheeks.</p>
<p>“Síora,” I said, but she couldn’t hear me or see me on my knees across from her. And if she could have heard me, what could I have said? I couldn’t ask her forgiveness for what I had done. I watched from a world away as she curled in on herself, her eyes closed, pressing her hands together in fists against her forehead until her breathing steadied and she could stand. She looked toward the sanctuary, somewhere in the dark above her, and seemed to be listening for a moment, and then she turned to stumble down the path, the way Vasco and the others had gone.</p>
<p>I let her go.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>The sky was empty. There was no sun, no moon, and no way for me to tell how long I had been in Tir Anemen, whether it was hours or days. I found my way by the ghost fires and didn’t care in what direction they took me. They burned everywhere, silent and cold, flickering at the edges of everything I could see. I grew used to the gray half-light they cast and the way it bled into the dark void above.</p>
<p>New fires kindled to life, and I learned to recognize them. They were the fires that burned when a body had been laid in a tomb and the rituals had been completed and the words had been said to return the flesh to the earth. They burned at the edge of my vision, points of light bright as lanterns against the glow of the other fires, no matter how far away they were, until I went to see. It seemed as though I had only to think of it, and I was there in the tomb. The roots holding up the walls and the ceiling, the earth, and the water pooling on the floor burned, too, and the faces were always faces that I recognized, even if I had only seen them among Derdre’s warriors the day of the battle. And they recognized me. After the first, I realized that I didn’t have to speak. They knew what should happen, and while some of their faces were tight with anger or they spat bitter words, they all reached for the fire I carried with something like relief.</p>
<p>I had stopped trying to find a way back to the other world when I found the <i>Nádaig</i>, or it found me.</p>
<p>I must have been in Frasoneigad. The pines were old and grew so closely together that most plants could not survive in the permanent twilight beneath them, and the fires that burned on the ground here were dim and pallid flickers, though I had seen the crowns of the trees blazing before I’d climbed down a shelf of rock to come this way. Against the deep shadow, the <i>Nádaig frasamen</i> appeared so bright that I could see the fine details of its hair, its armor-like skin and the ashy miasma coming off it, and the way its mouth moved at times, though I was too far away to hear the sounds it was making. In the other world, it would have been the brown and green of moss-covered bark; here it was white as bone and shining as if it was lit from within. I watched it move through the trees and would have let it go, except that it turned and put its face close to a tree to examine its trunk, and when it lifted his head, it saw me.</p>
<p>If I’d had my rifle and my saber with me, I wouldn’t have feared a guardian, but my weapons still lay on the floor of the sanctuary where I had dropped them, unthinking, when I had confronted Constantin after he’d called off the <i>Nádaig baro</i>. I might have had the power in me to kill a guardian with a glance. But if I did I had no idea how to call upon it. White fire ran down my hand in a steady trickle, but my fingers missed the worn hilt of my saber and the familiar weight of my gun as the guardian ventured toward me. It kept its head low and touched each tree that it passed as if it might duck out of sight if I suddenly seemed a threat. It was the <i>Nádaig</i>’s hesitance that kept me where I was, until we stood across from each other, and I had to crane my head back to look up at its face.</p>
<p>The <i>Nádaig</i> breathed out in a huffing growl and looked down at me, its eyes wide under its matted, mossy hair and the antlers that spread out from the crown of its head.</p>
<p>“I won’t hurt you,” I said, because it seemed to expect me to say something. My voice sounded strange to me. It had been so long since had spoken, and sound behaved strangely here, as though the air itself muffled and killed it before it could fully escape.</p>
<p>In answer, the <i>Nádaig</i> held out one of its hands, shaped like a man’s but larger, with rough skin creased deeply at the joints and fingers tipped with claws. It offered its hand to me and, hardly knowing what to expect, I gave it mine—my right hand, though it was an awkward reach.</p>
<p>The <i>Nádaig</i> kept its shape when the rest of the world distorted and blurred into shadows that were more or less solid, more or less gray. And then light hit my eyes, so bright it was painful, and I put up both my arms to cover my face.</p>
<p>“Lily!” Constantin was suddenly there in front of me, and I heard the <i>Nádaig</i> shuffle away a step. Constantin’s hands on my arms were urgent. “Where in the hells were you?” He bent down, trying to get a look at my face.</p>
<p>I might have laughed, because hell was apparently where I had been, but there were white fires and the echoes of ghosts’ voices still in the back of my mind. After the darkness and heavy hush of Tir Anemen, as if the whole world was saying be still, be quiet, the light and sounds of this world came too quickly and insistently, forcing themselves on my senses.</p>
<p>He hesitated, but then Constantin put his arms around me and pulled me close. He had taken off his cuirass, but instead of the heavy fabric of his coat, I felt leather and fur against my cheek. He was wearing an islander’s tunic, I realized, as I pressed my face into the hollow where his throat met his shoulder to find some relief from the glaring light. His tunic was warm, and it smelled like leather and drying grass under the sun. “Are you hurt?” he asked. “You’re freezing.”</p>
<p>“I’m fine.” I turned my head slightly so I could see the shine of polished obsidian on his shoulder and the marked skin on his neck and jaw.</p>
<p>This close, I could feel and hear him take a breath. “Don’t put on a face for me. You’re not,” he said. “You’re so tense I can feel it.” He drew back a little to look down at me, and when he did, I realized the sunlight had grown a little softer. “Where were you?” he asked again. “I couldn’t sense you at all.”</p>
<p>He was afraid for me, I realized. And as soon as I thought it, I expected to feel his emotions, fear and relief trembling against each other in my chest, making my arms and legs weak. I could imagine it so well because that was how I had felt after the Coin Guard had marched into the hall to kill us both, after Kurt had killed himself instead. But I couldn’t feel Constantin’s emotions when I tried to, tentatively, with no idea of how this new sense worked. I knew I hadn’t imagined feeling Constantin’s emotions in the sanctuary. Had he found some way to stop it from happening?</p>
<p>“The land of the dead, I think,” I said. I took a deep breath, suddenly aware that I would be there still if the <i>Nádaig</i> hadn't seen me, and felt Constantin’s arms tighten around me. “Síora called it Tir Anemen.”</p>
<p>“Was Síora there? But she isn’t dead.”</p>
<p>“No. She was dreaming.” But Father Petrus, Aphra, and so many others were dead, because of me. Almost as soon as I wanted to move, Constantin let go of me.</p>
<p>My eyes had grown used to daylight again, and I could see that we stood in a small, rocky meadow surrounded on all sides by tall, straight pines—the forest of Frasonegaid. I could hear a stream flowing and tumbling over rocks nearby. Judging by the position of the sun and the heat that lay heavy on the air, it was late afternoon. “How long was I gone?” I asked Constantin. When I looked up at him, his face was drawn with worry.</p>
<p>“Four days,” he said.</p>
<p>A few feet behind him, the <i>Nádaig</i> squatted on its hooved hind legs, resting its elbows on its knees. It watched us quietly. I had been closer to a <i>Nádaig</i> than this, but always in the middle of a fight, when its ferocity and strength and the feel of my blade skittering uselessly on that armor made me feel in my gut just how small and unprotected I was. I had never seen one at ease like this. The <i>Nádaig</i>’s gaze moved from me to Constantin as we spoke, as if it was following our conversation. It was a human gesture, and seeing it, I remembered how Mev had wailed when we’d killed another <i>Nádaig frasamen</i> in these forests and felt sick.</p>
<p>When neither one of us said anything for a moment, the <i>Nádaig</i> turned back to me, and I met its eyes, eerily human in that monstrous face. Its skeletal mouth opened, and it made that same huffing sound again, almost as though I’d surprised it by looking it in the eye. Only then I noticed that its skin no longer looked burned. The ash was gone. But when Constantin spoke again, I forgot to wonder how that had happened.</p>
<p>“He’s one of the last in this part of the island,” Constantin said, in that careful tone he used when he wasn’t sure how I would react to what he was saying. “There are only five left.”</p>
<p>“The ones I haven’t killed.”</p>
<p>“On the orders of the prince,” Constantin said. “To find a cure. Would you have done it for any other reason?</p>
<p>“And it was never just you,” he continued before I could say that yes, if I had been traveling across the island and come across one of the guardians, I would have tried to kill it if I thought it meant to kill me. His expression blazed with certainty, and he wasn’t going to let me hide from it. Sometime during the days I’d been gone from New Sérène while he’d been sick, everything had changed for him. And he had changed everything because of it. I felt as though he was calling to me from a world that I couldn’t see.</p>
<p>“The <i>Nádaig</i> have been taken and burned at the stake in San Matheus. They’ve been taken captive by the Bridge for their experiments. And for every <i>Nádaig</i>, how many of the Yecht Fradi have died? It’s the old world that’s killing Tir Fradi and its people. You were just one of the tools it used—the best weapon that my father could send.”</p>
<p>“Constantin, we killed their god. We’re the worst of the conquerors.”</p>
<p>“He would have killed me before I had ever thought to fight him, if he could have. He certainly tried everything in his power.”</p>
<p>I should know. I had been one of the weapons <i>en on mil frichtimen</i> had tried to use. “Would you have let me kill you?” I asked.</p>
<p>“Yes,” he said simply, without hesitation. Somehow it was worse to know that he wouldn’t have fought me. I felt as though I would never leave that moment in which I’d been standing across from him with a knife in my hand, a thought and a step away from stabbing the one person I had loved for as long as I could remember.</p>
<p>“Blame me,” he said. “Not yourself. I put that choice on you. I needed you to come with me, and I knew you would talk me out of it if I gave you the opportunity.” He reached for me and brushed his fingers over my cheek with its mark, and I felt his hand slip around to cradle the back of my head. I thought he might kiss me. But before that thought made my breath catch in my throat, before I knew my feelings about it, he embraced me instead. “None of this was ever worth anything if you weren’t with me.”</p>
<p>I could feel my heart beating when I brought my arms up to hold him and spread my fingers across his back. This had changed, too. We had always been close, comfortable with each other in the way that siblings were, but never this way. I couldn’t forget the desire I’d felt in the sanctuary, and I was too aware of the curve of his back underneath his tunic.</p>
<p>“I need your help,” he said after a moment, his voice a low murmur in my ear. “We need to send them back.”</p>
<p>The Congregation, the Bridge, the Coin Guard—he didn’t have to explain to me the threat they posed to us now or the suffering they—<i>we</i>—had caused on the island. But he meant to send all of the colonists back to the continent, and the malichor, without a cure. My companions and I were the only ones who had learned from <i>en on mil frichtimen</i> and Dunncas how the plague could be stopped. To send the colonists back without that knowledge…we would be sending them back to die. “What right do we have, Constantin?”</p>
<p>“What right?” He laughed once, almost too quietly for me to hear. “All the right in the world, you especially! The ones who have power always decide, for better or worse. You know that. They don’t belong here, and once they’re gone, we can change things for the better.</p>
<p>“Please. Do this with me. We will be better; I promise, Lily.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Just three things, really:</p>
<p>1. I'm putting myself on notice to post a new chapter every other week(ish). It might not happen on Saturdays like I'd been doing before, but I should be able to stick to that schedule. (Just note the "ish". The ish is important.)</p>
<p>2. You probably noticed Lily's name as the chapter header in Chapter 1, and you probably thought that meant that there were going to be multiple POVs in this story. And two weeks ago, you would have been right. But since then, I've taken myself to writing class on Authortube (which I had no idea was even a thing), and I've gutted and put my outline back together to take out that second POV. The good news:  Constantin and Lily will be in every chapter, I've gotten rid of a really mean cliffhanger (or made it less mean, anyway), and I might be able to finish this series by my birthday in a few months, which would be an amazing present to myself.</p>
<p>3. Tir Anemen is a made-up name based on LaughingTiger's amazing Yecht Fradi <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23437642">dictionary</a>, in which LaughingTiger recommends not doing the thing I just did... If I've completely mucked it up, let me know!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. The Heart of Tir Fradi</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“What happened?”</p><p>Constantin had brought us back, and for a moment after the world formed itself around us again, I didn’t recognize the sanctuary. We stood in a copse of trees, thin saplings whose lower branches brushed the top of my head. Their leaves cast a green shade over the floor of the cavern, which was covered in drifts of grass. I only realized where we were when I saw the rock walls above us, the muted colors in them brought out by the light shining through the crevice in the ceiling.</p><p>A strip of fabric hung from one of the trees nearest us. The whole length of it was stained with blood and stiff, and when I tugged it out of the tree, I recognized the sleeve of Constantin’s shirt.</p><p>“It happened after you disappeared,” Constantin said when I asked. He took the fabric from me and turned it over in his hands as if it was nothing more interesting than a piece of paper, one of the many reports he’d had to sign his name to as governor. “My hand started bleeding again, and when it showed no sign of stopping, I thought I would put the shirt to good use.” He held up the stained fabric and then let it fall out of his hands. “It was an impressive amount of blood.”</p><p>“More than that?” I asked.</p><p>“More than one shirt could stand up to,” he said, then smiled at me in that way he did when he wanted me to laugh at myself. His eyes may have been that eerie light blue and his face masked by the marks of the malichor and the bonding ceremony, but that expression was his. “—Why are you making that face when you can see I’m right here and whole? Come—” He held out his hand to me, and we started to wind our way through the trees, my left hand in his right. I could feel the lines of the scars on his palm, and I remembered the way the fire had felt, trickling over my own palm and down my fingers.</p><p>“I was looking for you,” Constantin was saying. “And when I came back to myself, I had bled through my bandage, and I was sitting in the middle of this—in a field in the shade. The bleeding only stopped when I found you.”</p><p>“Something like that happened to me. But it was fire, not blood.” I only realized while I was speaking that the trickle of fire from my hand had stopped. Had it stopped when Constantin and I had reunited?</p><p>“Fire?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at me.</p><p>“White fire. –It didn’t hurt me,” I said, when he took my wrist to examine my hand. We had stopped near the edge of the trees, where the grass gave way to bare rock. “It was cold. It felt like…not water, not exactly. Almost like a vapor.”</p><p>“Like what it was.”</p><p>“Like what it was,” I echoed. “Impossibly.”</p><p>“Mm.” With his head still bent toward my hand, he looked up at me. He was thinking something and not sure if he should say it.</p><p>“I did things in Tir Anemen,” I said, when the silence stretched too long. “The fire let me send spirits on. …And return their bodies to the earth.” It was hard to speak of these things. We might have had the words to describe godlike acts in our language once, but on Gacane, no one with good sense and an education believed in the old gods now. If people worshipped, they worshipped the Enlightened or the light of science. Or the gleam of coin. The Yecht Fradi surely had the words, but I didn’t know them. I stopped before I said that I was frightened. I had never said something like that to Constantin before.</p><p>“You’ll outpace me if you keep going on like this,” Constantin said. He started to walk again, toward the great tree that still stood at the back of the cavern, and it seemed like that was all he would say on the subject, putting a cap on the conversation with a jest. But then he turned to face me and, still walking backward, he said, “We have a lot to learn, Lily; I know it. But we will.”</p><p>He stopped in front of the tree, near the place where we had bound ourselves. The tree itself looked almost like it had that day. But there was no light in it, and the <i>aliveness</i> that had been in the air the first time I’d come here was gone. Constantin was watching me when I looked at him again.</p><p>“Here,” he said, gesturing at the spot where I stood, and I followed him when he lowered himself to sit cross-legged on the ground. His eyes, solemn now, met mine. “Catasach told me that the Yecht Fradi study the cycles of the world. He said,”—he looked down, and a wry smile crossed his lips—“the mark of a grown man is that he recognizes that nothing is ever still. Everything ends in its time and gives its place to something else. What is important is the balance.”</p><p>“You miss him.”</p><p>“Yes,” he said. “I wish I could explain it as well as he did. What I’m attempting to say is that I think <i>we</i> are those cycles now.”</p><p>“You mean life and death?” If Constantin was right, did that mean I had become death personified? I walked with ghosts in the dark shadow of this world, and I could turn a body to ash with a touch. The thought felt true in the way that everything else I knew settled around it, into place. The truth neither knew nor cared if I wanted it or not; it just was.</p><p>He gave me an echo of the look he’d given me earlier, when he hadn’t said what he’d been thinking, and I wondered how long it had been since he’d guessed. “Life and death, yes, but more than that—summer and winter, day and night. You’ve been feeling the change when the sun goes down, haven’t you?”</p><p>“Yes…or I did the first night. I could feel so much more after sunset. And I saw the white fire for the first time—the ghost fire, that’s how I’ve been thinking of it—around the <i>Nádaig</i>, and Síora and the others on the battlefield. Have you felt something like that?” I asked him without pausing. The battle was something that I couldn’t speak of. It had been a terrible mistake—one that I could never correct. Constantin shared the blame for it; I knew that. But the seeds of that day had been sown a long time ago, before we had even boarded a ship departing from Sérène—perhaps when Doctor Asili had learned that the merchant prince’s son was bound for New Sérène along with his island-born “cousin,” perhaps when the Prince d’Orsay had decided to adopt a captive’s child into the family. What we had done had been born out of a long history.</p><p>“I feel more expansive during the day,” Constantin said, leaning toward me as he spoke. “More powerful. –It’s almost like someone is playing a drum, and I can’t hear it, but even so I feel the rhythm of it, driving me. The sun rises, and I want to run and just keep running.”</p><p>“Like a pulse.”</p><p>“Yes. That’s how it feels.” He sat back and turn to glance up at the tree. “But that is why we need to be together for this.”</p><p>He had explained to me what he intended to do—what <i>we</i> should do. Now he held out his hands, and I was out of time to feel undecided. It was possible that no one would die, that they would all make it safely off the island. It was possible, but unlikely. I knew the risks people would take to protect their property and their livelihoods. Some of them would die. But if we started a war, there would be more deaths on both sides, and the fighting might last for years. This way, I told myself, we would all pay less in blood.</p><p>“Nothing you feel can hurt you,” Constantin said when I rested my hands on his, palm to palm, and I knew he could feel me trembling, the nervous anticipation making my chest feel tight, making me clench my teeth. “Do you trust me?”</p><p>I nodded. “Yes.” And it was true; I did.</p><p>He pulled me—my hands and the part of me that was now so much larger than my body—and I followed him down, out of my body and into the mountain, until I couldn’t separate myself from him or from the volcano. For a moment, we had the cold weight of stone. Then we went deeper still, into the fiery heart of the island, churning with the force of mysterious currents. That lake of fire had been quiet for ages and generations, but now it was restive, moving, pushing up and pushing out. The pressure of stone—I wanted to shake it off, to stretch, to fight my way to the open air.</p><p>Perhaps it was my training that made me remember myself. I was the volcano, but I was also myself. And I could imagine too well the consequences of letting loose so much fire. I pulled back when Constantin wanted to push forward, and for a time—maybe hours, maybe days—the rock above us shook, until we met each other somewhere in the middle.</p><p>The pressure under the earth built. Over several days, fast enough for human eyes to notice, the fields outside of New Sérène and San Matheus bulged, becoming hills, and clouds of ash and sulfurous gas could be seen rising from the mouth of the cavern that lay below Hikmet. Then the fire overflowed from the heart of the mountain. Rifts opened in the earth; red lava spilled out; and the skies over the cities were filled with ash and smoke. The volcano was more thorough than an army in its destruction. Nothing could stand against it. In Asili’s laboratory, I made sure of that. I flooded his noxious den with molten lava until even the metal bars on the cages had melted.</p><p>When the lava reached the cities, the fires burned day and night, reflecting off the clouds of ash until the air seemed to burn, too. People, rich and poor alike, fled to the docks with what they could carry in their arms and on their backs, and when the Nauts’ warehouses began to burn, they waded or swam, holding wet cloths over their faces, to wait along the shore for a ship that would carry them safely home.</p><p>Sails on the horizon were met with ragged cheers. The Nauts’ island lay closer to Teer Fradee than Gacane, and the sailors ferried colonists from their ruined cities to their own harbors, taking as many as could sleep in their holds or the few unused corners on deck before returning for more. And that was how the colonists left the island and the all the hopes and enterprises of the nation I’d served, the one I had thought I’d belonged to, were reduced to smoking rubble, encased in cooling stone.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>Constantin still held my hands when we returned to our bodies, and the feeling of being only one thing, closed in and separate from everything around me, was so disorienting that I kept a vise grip on his hands until the world righted itself into up and down, me and not me. He seemed to recover faster than I did; when I finally let him go, he unfolded his long legs and stood, trailing his fingers along one of the branches crowning my head as if to reassure me. The touch was familiar, but the sensation of his fingers brushing parts of me that hadn’t existed days ago was still strange enough that I startled at it. Then Constantin looked toward the trees and the meadow that had sprung up in the middle of the cavern, and I followed his gaze. Had the trees grown taller?</p><p>“How long?” I asked. I half expected my voice to be dry and cracked—it had been at least a few days—but the words came out easily.</p><p>Constantin gave me a considering look. “A week?” he guessed. “Two?” He gestured toward me, and when I looked down at myself, I saw that the surface of my cuirass was dull. When I touched it, my fingers left streaks on the iron and came away covered in dust. The sleeves of my coat were filthy. I got to my feet and started to work on the leather straps holding my cuirass in place, and Constantin came to help me at my other shoulder.</p><p>“You look as though we never left,” I said, nodding at his tunic, which was clean, the leather soft and unmarked.</p><p>He laughed, low in his throat, and I felt the weight of my armor easing from my shoulder as he pulled the strap free. “It’s an illusion,” he said. “So much more convenient than real clothing.”</p><p>“Constantin—you’re walking around like the priest who wore no clothes?”</p><p>He raised his brows suggestively at me but then held out his arm so that I could touch his sleeve. “It’s a bit more substantial than that.”</p><p>“It feels like actual leather. And you, what?—imagined it into being?”</p><p>“Essentially, yes.”</p><p>With the straps loosened, I was able to pull the cuirass over my head, and I bent down to lay it carefully on the rock. I shrugged out of my coat and draped it over my armor. It was strange enough feeling as though my body was too small for me without having so many stiff layers between me and the air.</p><p>“I pictured it,” Constantin was saying. He touched his chest, dug his fingers into the fur at his collar. “One of the islanders who came with a trading party from Vignamri wore a tunic like this. When I tried to remember it, it seemed like I could remember every thread, like he was standing right there in front of me and I was looking at his clothing through one of the magnifying glasses the scholars use.</p><p>“–And then I called it, and here it is—a part of me, I guess. I don’t seem to be in danger of going bare-assed before the world,” he said, knowing it would make me smile.</p><p>The tunic was made of simple, undyed leather, without the feathered trim across the chest that a <i>tiern</i> would have worn. But carved obsidian armor was strapped across Constantin’s chest and shoulders and on his gloves where vambraces would have been. The man he’d seen must have been a warrior escorting the traders who had come to New Sérène.</p><p>“You’ll need to try it sooner or later,” he said. “What you have now won’t last forever.” He was right. Already my breeches were caked with dried mud in places and starting to fray at the knees, and I didn’t want to think about the way my shirt must smell. Perhaps goddesses did not sweat, but I had worn that shirt for a day’s travel and a battle before I’d met Constantin in the mountain.</p><p>“I don’t know that I have your imagination,” I said.</p><p>He smiled, closed-lipped and crooked, and for a moment I wondered at what jests were running through his mind. Then the thought—<i>You could go without</i>—came to me, faint and fast. Perhaps I had been the one who’d thought it. Perhaps I was making up thoughts to go with that expression on his face.</p><p>But now Constantin’s eyes were wide, and he looked at me as if he expected me to say something in response to the thought he hadn’t meant for me to hear. Our eyes met for a moment. Did he want me to say something? What would he do if I did?</p><p>There are spaces in conversations where possibilities live—so many things that might be said. I could hear whispers of them now in my mind, unspoken words between the two of us. If I spoke them, they might change everything.</p><p>Instead, I busied myself by rolling up my shirt sleeves. “You said you ‘called’ it, the illusion. What does that mean?” I asked. It was a safe question.</p><p>“Nothing escapes you,” he said, teasing me the way he’d always used to, but I noticed the absence of “Cousin.” He hadn’t called me that since the ritual. It was more confirmation that our relationship had changed. The thought made me feel again as though my body was too small, but this time the feeling was familiar. It felt like nerves. It felt like anticipation. And it was too new; I wasn’t sure that I wanted it.</p><p>Constantin didn’t seem to notice how I’d grown preoccupied or the reason for it. He left me to walk towards the small forest in the middle of the cavern and ran his hand up the slender trunk of the nearest tree. “I know you found my notes,” he said. He meant the papers he had hidden in the cave outside of New Sérène. “I’ve been going by feel since…well, since I came here the first time and was chased off by the <i>Nádaig</i>. I’ve been thinking of the magic as ‘calling’ and ‘becoming’. So far it’s worked.” He looked at the trunk, his hand stilled, and I watched as the tree moved, shooting up several inches, the leaves shuddering and rustling together as they deepened in color from the pale green of spring to the deeper jewel tone of summer.</p><p>I was about to ask him to show me more when I felt something like a pressure on my heart, as if someone had reached through my chest to touch it with curious fingertips. Someone had passed through the gate to Anemhaid and was coming up the mountain.</p><p>This time I reached out and felt for the visitor without thinking. “It’s Dunncas,” I said, before I thought to question how sure I was of something I couldn’t see.</p><p>Constantin had turned to face me, and he nodded, his face tight. I could feel what he was feeling, the ferment of nerves and eagerness that made him stand straighter and search for something to do with his hands, first tugging and smoothing at his tunic, then fighting to not cross his arms over his chest. When I went to him and offered my hand, he took it without hesitating and gave me a squeeze.</p><p><i>The high king. I hardly know anything about him,</i> he said in my thoughts.</p><p>I could well imagine why Dunncas had come. If he had expected something like this from me, he never would have allowed Derdre and her army to accompany me up the mountain. And now that the unexpected had happened, he wanted to know our intentions. It was a small sign of hope that he had come by himself, rather than sending an army to meet us.</p><p><i>He’s fair,</i> I thought and hoped that Constantin could hear. <i>He’s a wise leader, and I’ve only ever known him to think before he speaks or acts. –But he will be watching you, Constantin, taking your measure.</i></p><p>
  <i>I know. I’m ready for it.</i>
</p><p>I had seen Constantin so little in his role as governor. I knew he could be diplomatic when it was necessary, but there was a large part of me—the part that was used to taking the lead and speaking for myself and the Congregation—that felt uneasy at the idea of letting Constantin do the talking. We had been together our whole lives, but we had never worked together, not in this sense.</p><p>He smiled wryly at me when he felt my doubts. <i>Trust me,</i> he said in my thoughts. <i>I do know how to behave myself, Lily.</i></p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>Dunncas found us in the middle of the trees, where the trunks grew farther apart in a circle around the place Constantin had sat while he’d been looking for me. Branches formed a rustling canopy over our heads, the leaves flashing green and silver in a breeze that shouldn’t have been possible in the depths of the cavern. I wondered if Constantin was orchestrating it, but when I glanced over at him, he was focused on the high king as he wound his way toward us through the small forest. Constantin’s face was composed and gave nothing away, but his shoulders were stiff. His fingers tapped against the back of my hand before he caught himself and forced them to quiet.</p><p>Dunncas stopped a few feet away, and his gaze shifted from Constantin to me. He wore the crown of the high kings and underneath the white paint that streaked his face, his expression was grave. It was a face I knew well, the same face he’d turned on Aphra when he and the elders of his clan had caught us attempting to follow them. His composure was one reason I’d given him the crown. I could tell myself that the fact he’d come here alone and empty-handed was a sign that I’d chosen well. I could tell myself that he would deal fairly with us. But that didn’t ease the guilt I felt at the thought that he had trusted me, and I had betrayed him and all of the Yecht Fradi.</p><p>Constantin leaned a little closer to me, so our shoulders pressed together.</p><p>“I am told that this man is your cousin,” Dunncas said, his eyes on Constantin. For a moment, I thought that Constantin would take offense at the casual greeting, but he stayed quiet beside me while Dunncas studied him. By now, I had grown used to Constantin’s appearance. I could look at his scarred face and pale eyes without feeling breathless with fear for him, and when he smiled at me, I could almost see him the way he had been. But when Dunncas looked at him, would he see someone who looked less than human? Would he see a monster?</p><p>I didn’t like feeling on such uncertain footing at the beginning of a negotiation, but these were the circumstances we’d given ourselves. “Yes,” I said. “Allow me to introduce Constantin d’Orsay, Dunncas. We are family, but not by blood, as I’m sure you’re aware. We were raised together in Sérène, on the continent.”</p><p>Constantin started forward, letting go of my hand. “<i>Tiern,</i>” he said, going to Dunncas’s side and gesturing him forward. “Please, come and eat with us. We’d welcome the opportunity to talk with you.” There was a stone cup in Constantin’s hand and, with no sign of its arrival, a blanket was spread before me, piled with food, with drinking skins scattered beside it. I recognized the blanket and the food; this was the picnic I had interrupted when the Bridge scholars had attempted to hold Constantin for ransom. There was Constantin’s drinking skin with the gold filigree below the mouth, and there were the grapes and ham I had eaten and loaves of crusty bread and wedges of cheese. Dunncas was examining the strange food, bemused.</p><p><i>Venison and berries,</i> I thought. That had been the meal we’d eaten the night we’d been invited to stay in Vigyigidaw, the only meal I’d taken in an islander village. It was Dunncas’s face that told me something had changed, and when I looked down, there was the fire in front of me, a haunch of venison hung above it. Around it woven blankets were spread in a circle along with stone bowls full of roasted roots and berries and the crushed herbs the islanders used to flavor their meat. I could smell the smoke from the fire and charring fat. The cavern had grown darker and the air balmy, as if it was nighttime, but when I looked up, I could see the shadow of leaves above us and, more distant, the solid rock walls.</p><p>Dunncas met my eyes when I looked at him. Did he remember this night?</p><p>“Please,” Constantin said again when Dunncas hadn’t moved. The high king finally nodded and went to sit on one of the blankets, one knee drawn up toward his chest and the other leg bent and resting on the ground. I sat across the fire, and Constantin folded his long legs beside Dunncas and offered him the cup again. But Dunncas held up his hand to refuse it.</p><p><i>He won’t be obligated to us,</i> I thought, and Constantin’s eyes met mine across the fire.</p><p>Dunncas glanced at me before turning to Constantin. “Few among us know you,” he said, “but you have struck a blow at the heart of our island.</p><p>“You,” he said, opening one hand to gesture to me, “we trusted, <i>on ol menawi,</i> one I called <i>carants</i>. And you have repaid that trust with deception and violence.”</p><p>Constantin felt how the words affected me. <i>You saved me,</i> he said in my mind. <i>He will see that.</i></p><p><i>He may only see the cost of it, Constantin,</i> I answered.</p><p>“Tell me,” Dunncas continued, giving no sign that he was aware of our silent exchange. “Why have you done this?”</p><p>“I asked her to,” Constantin said at once. He gestured toward his face with the hand that had held the cup, which was nowhere to be seen. “I was sick with the malichor, the blood plague. Doctors are still mystified by it; there is no cure. And no medicine from the continent can cool the fire it sets loose in your blood. –Lily was able to bring Catasach to me to try to ease the pain. It would have killed me if she hadn’t.” He looked at me as he said the last.</p><p>“And Catasach was able to do this?” Dunncas asked.</p><p>“He led me through the bonding ritual,” Constantin said. He told Dunncas the story—how he had woken in his bed after I’d freed him from Vinbarr and discovered he had changed, how he had come to Anemhaid the first time to try to understand what had happened, and his realization that <i>en on mil frichtimen</i> wanted to see him dead. There was more to it. Constantin said nothing of what he had done afterward to bond himself to the island and take power from the god. I knew the places he had been, and I’d read the notes he kept. But he hadn’t told me yet what he’d felt or thought while he was doing those things. I had grown used to being apart from him since we had arrived on the island, but still, there had never been so much unsaid between us.</p><p>Dunncas, too, knew part of the story, the sum of what he’d heard from <i>en on mil frichtimen</i> and from me in the days before the battle. He watched Constantin, attentive and impossible to read. He must have been weighing Constantin’s words against his god’s. And how much weight would he give the words of someone he must see as a usurper? I sat up straighter, ready for accusations and blame.</p><p>But I couldn’t have anticipated what Dunncas said when he spoke. He let out his breath in a sigh when Constantin had finished speaking and nodded; then he turned to me. “I see that he is your <i>minundhanem</i>, <i>on ol menawi</i>, and you are his.”</p><p>Constantin felt how his words stopped my breath and gave me a searching look. <i>What does that mean?</i></p><p>I shook my head. Catasach had said something similar to me once. <i>It is a hard thing to lose your minundhanem</i>. I hadn’t known what the word meant, then; I had only supposed, when I thought about it later, that it translated to a loved one. But when we had been tracking Céra and I had come across the word again, I asked Síora what it meant. “One who knows my mind,” she had said—a lover, but not one you meet for a night or a season. Your <i>minundhanem</i> shares your path with you; their mind and their wishes are as your own.</p><p>Constantin and I shared our thoughts as easily as talking. We had gone out of our bodies together into the volcano, and I couldn’t have said then where he had ended and I began. What would it mean to be with Constantin that way, knowing what that word meant? What would it mean if he knew what it meant, too?</p><p>Constantin didn’t look away from me, even when Dunncas continued. “I look back down the path we have traveled, and now I see the bond that has guided your steps. But I cannot see what lies ahead.” He had paused before he’d spoken, and I only realized then that he was aware of the thoughts we were sharing. He had made space for us to talk with each other.</p><p>“We haven’t done this to conquer the Yecht Fradi, Dunncas,” I said, and that seemed to bring Constantin back to himself.</p><p>“No,” he said. “We wanted to free ourselves—and you—from the grasp of the old world. The Yecht Fradi should determine the course of their own future.”</p><p>“And do you see yourself as the king of this future?” Dunncas asked.</p><p>“No,” Constantin replied at once. “No.” He looked at Dunncas and held out his hands. His eagerness made my heart beat faster, but there was something else—regret and grief that weighed me down. “–I have ideas,” he said, “but I know so little about the island and your people. Catasach only started to teach me the night he was killed.”</p><p>Dunncas made a noise low in his throat. “Catasach saw something in you,” he said. “His is the voice I would like to hear more than any other. And yet I can only follow the signs he left in life.</p><p>“If you want to learn,” he continued, his eyes watchful for Constantin’s reaction, “you may come to live at Vigyigidaw and listen and meditate with our <i>sin ol menawi</i>, as you should have done before your bonding.”</p><p>If Constantin had been sitting next to me, he might have grabbed my arm or my shoulder, completely heedless of how that would look, trying to silently send the jolt of relief he felt through me. But we didn’t need that physical closeness anymore. I felt that jolt in my core, as if it was my own.</p><p>It wasn’t just that he grieved Catasach and saw something of him in Dunncas. He genuinely wanted to learn more about the Yecht Fradi. His thoughts, half-thought, were a steady, thrumming current that I almost could hear. –If I could have seen him like this more, if he had been able to travel with me, how much happier would we both have been? Now when his face lit up, I knew that I loved him as much as I ever had.</p><p>Too late, I remembered that the barrier between us was gone. Constantin had opened his mouth to reply to Dunncas—“We—”—but he hesitated, faltering. Before he could look at me, I got to my feet.</p><p>“We will come,” I said. “Thank you, Dunncas.” I held out my hand to help him to his feet, and he kept his hand closed around my wrist for a moment after he stood. He gave me a searching look and then nodded, almost as if to himself. Constantin was slower to stand, and when I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye, he was looking off into the trees, distracted.</p><p>Dunncas let go of me, but before he turned to leave, I asked, “What of the other <i>mal</i>?”</p><p>He looked at me for a moment before he replied, and though I would have said he’d been softening toward us a moment ago, now he wore that grave expression again beneath his face paint. “I called a council of kings at Dorhadgenedu,” he said. “…You want to know if there are some who will fight you—and there may be. I cannot stop them. But you have seen the result of that council, <i>on ol menawi.</i> I came here alone.”</p><p>With that, he left us. Constantin walked with Dunncas to the cavern’s entrance, leaving me at the mercy of the nerves fluttering up in my stomach, as if I was standing on a precipice and half my mind was convinced I’d already stepped off the edge. I wasn’t thinking anything; I wasn’t capable of it. Then I heard footsteps, one set of footsteps, coming closer, and it was too late to think.</p><p>He was coming back, and we were alone again.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>1. Oh, hey--let me just wave at that self-imposed deadline as it sails by. XD Let's just say that two to three weeks is probably more realistic for chapters. Thanks for being patient with me!</p><p>2. Cue the slightly less mean cliff-hanger. In my original outline I was going to switch to another character's POV (no, not Constantin's) for a chapter or two here, but I'm not actually going to torture you like that. ;)</p><p>3. My soundtrack for the volcanic eruption originally was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-TN4bK7cVA">Starborn</a> by Ninja Tracks. This scene was different in my head when I was outlining, but I'm pretty happy with the way it and the chapter turned out.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Where I Does Not Exist, Nor You</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I wasn’t shy in love. Even after Anan, I’d had lovers in Sérène—not many in the year before we’d left for Teer Fradee, true, but there had been smiles that tempted me and blue eyes that tempted me. And there, in the old world, the game and its rules had been familiar. They never knew my name, and if they guessed who I was—there was no disguising my mark—they always understood that the moment of pleasure we’d shared had been just that, a moment. If they hadn’t followed the rules, there would have been ways of making them clearer, perhaps the steward opening his coin purse or Kurt glowering over my shoulder with his broadsword on his back. There was an art to getting tangled and then untangled again without attachments.</p>
<p>I wasn’t shy in love. But one love is as different from another as a river is from the sea. And some loves don’t let you go.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>My memory of the fire and feast in Vigyigidaw faded from the air. The sanctuary had grown darker during the time Dunncas had sat with us; the sun would be sinking below the horizon soon.</p>
<p>When Constantin came back to me under the trees, he said nothing at first, only looked at me with his bright eyes. Already my hands had come up to my waist, my fingers twisting together. It was a horrible tell, one I’d been training out of myself for years. He knew it; I knew it; and there wasn’t anything I could do about it now. My hands had to have something to hold onto.</p>
<p>“What does <i>minundhanem</i> mean?” he asked. “You recognized it.”</p>
<p>I would tell him the truth. I had already decided to, but still I had to take a breath to steady myself before I could say, “Síora told me that it means ‘one who knows my mind.’”</p>
<p>“Is that all?” He opened his mouth as if to say something else, but then stopped himself.</p>
<p>I couldn’t expect him to understand based on that description alone. The Congregation did not have a concept like that of a <i>minundhanem</i>; no culture on Gacane did. Marriages were made to strengthen a family’s wealth or political position—and sometimes for love. But even our ideas of romantic love only captured a joining hearts and bodies, not minds. “Vinbarr’s <i>minundhanem</i> was a woman named Céra,” I said. I forced myself to meet his eyes when I wanted to look away, to put some distance between us. “They had been joined together for many years, and when I was looking for you, she was looking for him. She suspected that he had been called by the island…that he was becoming a guardian.”</p>
<p>He was frowning, his eyes intent on my face. He had put that barrier between our thoughts and our emotions again, and my rebelling stomach, tight shoulders, and dry mouth were all my own. “She was captured by the Bridge while she was trying to enter one of the sacred caves to discover where he’d gone. We were able to free her, and in return, she let us go into the cave with her. But when I told her why we were searching for Vinbarr, she left and shut us in. She tried to trap us in the cave. When we escaped, we found her waiting below Meinei Falag to stop us. …In the end, I had to kill her to get to you.</p>
<p>“She loved Vinbarr,” I said. “But she was willing to let him go, if it was what he was meant to do. She only wanted to see him one last time before he transformed.” And I had killed them both. It wasn’t a happy memory. But the word <i>minundhanem</i> was forever tied in my mind to that encounter with Céra.</p>
<p>“She was his wife,” Constantin said.</p>
<p>“She was. But more than that—she was his partner in everything. He was first in her mind.”</p>
<p>“Are you saying—” he started and stopped. Then he asked, “Do you love me?”</p>
<p>My throat closed on the words.</p>
<p>“Lily.” Constantin came to me and grabbed my arms, and I had to look up at him. “Do you love me?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” I managed, on a shaky breath. I always had loved Constantin more than anyone. It had never been like this between us, but just as everything else had changed the day I’d met him here in the sanctuary, this had too. When his hands came up to cradle my neck, the touch sent a bolt down my spine.</p>
<p>His breath came out harshly, and his eyes searched my face, followed by his fingertips, trailing over my jaw and the rough skin of my mark, my cheekbones. His thumb brushed over my lower lip. Then he kissed me.</p>
<p>His lips were rough, and he wasn’t gentle with me, pushing my head back with the force of his mouth on mine. But he pulled away when I gasped. When I met his eyes, his brows were drawn, and he touched the place where my skin had begun to feel raw below my lower lip.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think.”</p>
<p>I shook my head, but before I could protest that I didn’t want him to be careful with me, movement at the corner of his mouth caught my eye. His skin was changing. Between one moment and the next, the tracery of scars that covered his lips and chin like fine roots grew dry and brittle and drifted away in particles like the ashy clouds that had risen from the guardians he’d transformed.</p>
<p>“Constantin, your face—”</p>
<p>He touched his chin, examining his now-smooth skin. My hand followed his, and when I touched the rough edges of the scars on his cheeks, they crumbled, as brittle and frail as dry leaves, before they sifted through my fingers.</p>
<p>His fingers, too, were pale and smooth. I took his hand in both of mine and found that his palm and parts of the back of his hand had no scars. All the places I had touched him had healed.</p>
<p>“Did I do this?” I asked, looking up at him.</p>
<p>He cleared his throat. “Yes.”</p>
<p>“You must have noticed. Why didn’t you say anything?”</p>
<p>His lips twisted, and he said, “The reason doesn’t seem like much of a good one now.” When I didn’t look away, he continued, unwillingly, “I didn’t want to need rescuing.” Again. He didn’t say it, but I knew he was thinking it, even without being able to feel what he was feeling.</p>
<p>I opened my mouth to convince him but stopped myself in time. Instead, I said, “You said there are things that we have to do together.” He looked away from me, but he nodded. “Perhaps this is one of those things.”</p>
<p>When he didn’t reply, I asked him, “Do you think you’re meant to be this way?”</p>
<p>He laughed, a harsh exhale that had no humor in it. “I don’t know. Perhaps. –Lily, I told you, all of this has been guesswork. Everything I think I know might be proven wrong in the next moment.”</p>
<p>It was a sentiment so close to what I had been feeling that hearing it brought the ghost of a smile to my lips. “But,” I said, “until we’re proven wrong…” Something in my voice made him turn to look at me, and when he did, I reached for him. I ran my thumbs over his cheekbones and brushed the hair back from his temples, so I could touch the skin there. And little by little, the scars let go, revealing Constantin’s face under my hands.</p>
<p>I let my hands linger on his face. I couldn’t help it. He looked recognizably himself, less gaunt in the cheeks, perhaps, but… But something had changed in his expression or in the way he looked at me. Or perhaps it was that I saw him differently.</p>
<p>He was looking at me as though he didn’t want me to stop, and when I finally remembered myself and pulled away, his hands came up to press against my back and hold me there. “Such a sad expression,” he said. “Do I still look like a monster? Surely my face can’t be worse than it was!”</p>
<p>“No,” I said quickly, “the scars are gone.”</p>
<p>“If you aren’t grieving for my good looks, then will you tell me why you look as though someone’s died?”</p>
<p>The question almost made me smile, but it was too close to the truth of what I was feeling. “I thought you were going to die,” I said, quietly, speaking to his chest. “For months. I thought you only had days left, and any day I might…” I took a deep breath, and his hands tensed when I shuddered. “And I was gone so often.” Even now, that remembered dread that I would return to the governor’s palace to find it draped in black and an empty chair where Constantin should be made my chest feel tight.</p>
<p>“I’m not dying.” His hand on my chin coaxed me to look up at him. “I’m not dying,” he repeated. “And you don’t need to worry for me anymore.” He smiled at me, and this time I could smile in return. “I would forbid you from doing it, but…” He laughed when I wrestled my arm free to punch him lightly in the ribs. Still laughing, he pulled me to him and kissed me again, and his lips were soft and warm, almost hot, against mine. The shape of his mouth changed as his laughter faded. The kiss became firmer, more insistent. He held the back of my head, his fingers weaving through my hair, to keep me steady this time. But I matched him with my lips and tongue, until we both had to draw back, breathless.</p>
<p>His other hand was on the sash at my waist, but I put mine over it to stop him and felt more of the scars crackling and turning to dust under my fingers. “Let me finish this,” I said.</p>
<p>He kissed me again, almost too quickly for me to react before he took a step away. “Right,” he said, and took a deep breath. The look he gave me told me to hurry.</p>
<p>He didn’t move while I touched all of his head and neck, even the tender skin behind his ears and his scalp between the branches, or when I took each one of his hands in turn and rubbed the scars away from wrist to fingertips, as if I was washing his hands clean for him. Only when I had let go of his hands did he hold them up, rubbing his palms together, pushing one sleeve back so he could see where the broken edges of the scars left by the malichor and the bonding ritual gave way to unmarked skin.</p>
<p>He brought both hands up to his face, and his expression changed, his eyes widening, when his fingers met thicker skin on the right side of his face that I knew would be rough if he rubbed it one way but smooth if his fingers followed the veins of it.</p>
<p>“Your mark,” I said.</p>
<p>“What does it look like?” His fingers followed the edges of it, from the way it spider-webbed over his cheek almost to his ear and then down into the hollow of his throat, where it disappeared past the neck of his tunic.</p>
<p>“Like mine—but larger,” I said, tilting my head to get a better look at it. “Yours has more green in it.” At that, he looked dismayed in a way that was so like the princeling he’d been in Sérène that I laughed. “It suits you,” I reassured him.</p>
<p>After a moment his hands moved to the waist of his tunic to unfasten clasps that I hadn’t noticed before, that had been hidden by the strips of leather wrapping around his torso. He shrugged it off, and as soon as it fell heavily from his hands, it was gone. It must have been like he said, the tunic existed only as a part of him. The coarsely woven shirt he wore followed it, disappearing after he’d pulled it over his head. He stood in front of me with his arms carefully at his sides, and his chest and stomach, his shoulders, and the whole length of his arms were covered with the black veins of the malichor and the green-brown marks of the bonding ritual.</p>
<p>Fear gripped my chest all over again when I saw it, even though he was no longer in danger. He looked like death. I was so distracted by his scars and the feeling of them coming apart that I didn’t think that I was touching parts of him that I had never touched before until I’d bared most of his chest beneath my hands. Then I was glad that the cavern had grown dark enough that he couldn’t see the color that had risen in my cheeks. But even so, he felt how I hesitated before I moved my hands down from his chest to the planes of his stomach.</p>
<p>“Am I making you nervous?” he asked. He sounded entirely too satisfied with himself.</p>
<p>“Not at all,” I countered—but too quickly, too breathily.</p>
<p>“You’re a terrible liar, Lily.”</p>
<p>I moved around to his back and felt freer to look at him and feel the hard muscle of his shoulders under my hands as I worked. The closest I had come to seeing Constantin without a shirt before this had been the rare times during our sparring sessions that it had been hot enough for him to remove his doublet, leaving him dressed only in a thin linen shirt plastered to his skin in places with sweat. Usually on those days I was wishing that I could do the same and irritated that as a girl I was bound to different rules. Desire hadn’t entered into my thoughts. And, of course, Constantin had been my cousin then.</p>
<p>Now there was no sign of the Constantin the boy, who had always been too thin. And now, without his eyes on me, the urgency that nerves had given me started to fade, and my hands trailed more slowly over his broad back, his shoulder blades, and the ridges of muscle on either side of his spine. When my fingers wrapped around his ribs, he shivered.</p>
<p>His scars were gone before I realized it. I had passed over the small of his back twice when I noticed that the skin beneath my palms was already smooth and even. I stepped back, and Constantin turned, running his hands along his arms, touching his chest and his shoulders before he looked up at me.</p>
<p>“Thank you.”</p>
<p>There was heat in the way he looked at me, and again I couldn’t speak. And there was no safe place for me to look. When I looked down, away from his face and his bare chest, there were his trousers hugging tight to his hips and showing his arousal. I had felt the scars below the waist of his pants when my hands had skimmed over his hips. They must cover him head to foot, and I would need to touch every part of him to heal him.</p>
<p>I could still feel his skin against my palms. I missed the feel of it already.</p>
<p>He stopped me when I reached for the laces at his waist. “Lily…”</p>
<p>“What?”</p>
<p>“Just…” he said, and sighed and looked at me, caught between wanting and something else. “Just don’t look.”</p>
<p>“It isn’t you, Constantin,” I said, after a moment. “I know that.”</p>
<p>“Still,” he said. “It isn’t the first impression I’d like to give.”</p>
<p>I smiled at that and felt a little bolder knowing that I wasn’t the only one at the mercy of my nerves. With his laces undone, I stepped closer to him and slipped both of my hands down his trousers, along the hollows where his waist met his hips and inward to trail my fingers through his coarse hair and along the length of him, feeling rough, uneven skin turn silky. He took a shallow breath and brought his hands up to bury his fingers in my hair.</p>
<p>“I’ve known you since we were children in the nursery,” I said, smiling against his chest when I felt him twitching and growing harder in my hands. He swallowed, his breath hitching in his throat. “I imagine my first impression of you was that you were the noisy brat in the next cradle over, always drawing Eugenie’s attention.”</p>
<p>“The truth comes out,” he said, unsteadily. His chest shuddered under my cheek as he laughed. Then his hands cupped my jaw, coaxing me to tilt my face up for a kiss. Whatever intentions I’d started with had all burned away now. I pressed my hips against his when I moved my hands to the tops of his thighs, then the taunt muscle of his ass. And this time when he tugged at the sash at my waist, I didn’t stop him. The fabric loosened around my ribs, and I took a deep breath, feeling its absence.</p>
<p>Constantin drew back to push my waistcoat off my shoulders, and I had to move my hands to let the coat slide down my arms. But a moment later, his hungry mouth was on mine again. He tugged at my shirt, and then his hot hands encircled my ribs.</p>
<p>He laughed against my mouth. When I leaned back to look at him, he wore half a smile.</p>
<p>“What now?” I asked, no longer caring that I had hardly any breath to speak.</p>
<p>“Were you always this scandalous?” he asked, looking down at me, a teasing note in his voice.</p>
<p>I huffed impatiently when I answered. “A coat, waistcoat, sash, and shirt are quite enough without adding a shift and stays. In any case, you never noticed anything improper.”</p>
<p>“Thankfully not! –If I had I wouldn’t have been able to think of anything else.”</p>
<p>Did you love me then? The words came into my mind, but I held them back. That was the past. It wasn’t time that we had lost; it was time that had brought us here, now.</p>
<p>A moment later, he remembered that his hands were on my bare skin. His thumbs caressed me just below my breasts, and I shivered.</p>
<p>“Is this what you want?” he asked.</p>
<p>There was no hesitation in me when I answered. “Yes.” I stretched up to kiss him and heard myself whimpering when he held my breasts, brushing his fingers over my nipples.</p>
<p>In between kisses, we managed to get free of the rest of our clothing and our boots, laughing when some piece or another was stubborn or stuck. My laughter died in my throat when Constantin bent his head to kiss and suck at one of my breasts, then the other. His hair seemed brighter now and softer when I wove my fingers through it. Constantin trailed a path down my stomach with his mouth, making me gasp when he nipped at the crease of one of my thighs and rubbed his thumbs in circles over my hip bones.</p>
<p>With his hands on the back of my thighs, he pulled me down with him, unfolding his legs as he sat and settling me astride his hips. He looked up at me, and for a moment, it seemed as if he would say something else. But he stopped when I smiled at him and shifted and took him into me. He held tight to my hips as I sank down onto him, and the pressure of his fingers and graze of his teeth on my collarbone urged me on as I rocked against him, until the pressure that had been building in me broke in a wave and I dug my fingernails into his back.</p>
<p>Constantin felt my climax coming and took hold of my chin with one hand to capture my mouth again, and when I cried out, his lips were on mine. I could feel him smiling. I was boneless and heavy when he held me against his chest, one hand pressed between my shoulder blades, the other at the curve of my lower back, and rocked his hips, pushing into me, once, twice, and again, until he tensed and buried his face in the hollow of my throat, groaning.</p>
<p>After a moment he lay back in the grass, brushing strands of it out of his face with one hand, while the other idly caressed my thigh. I stayed where I was, with him still inside me, and smiled at him when he heaved out a sigh and rubbed his hands over his face. I couldn’t seem to stop smiling.</p>
<p>“There’s a face I’ve missed,” he said when he looked at me again. His hands found my wrists, and he pulled me down next to him so I lay with the heat of his skin against my breasts and belly and the cool air of the sanctuary and the whisper of the grass against my back. “Are you happy?” he asked me.</p>
<p>“More than happy.”</p>
<p>He fell silent. I could almost hear his thoughts as he lay next to me, trailing the tips of his fingers up and down the curve of my waist and hip. He was musing, dreaming, not thinking so much as letting his thoughts meander where they would, like I was, until I stretched and his skin scratched my inner thigh when I tried to drape my leg over his. I had forgotten about his legs. They were still scarred, except in the few places I had touched when Constantin and I both had been shoving his trousers off.</p>
<p>I sat up, and Constantin sighed again and closed his eyes as I began to work on his legs. It was easy to lose myself in the simplicity of it, touching him, feeling the marks on his skin turn brittle and drift away. It seemed too effortless to be magic, but there was no other name I could give it.</p>
<p>I had moved on to Constantin’s calf when he spoke again. “We should have done this a long time ago.”</p>
<p>“It would have been different.”</p>
<p>He didn’t answer for a moment. When I glanced at him, his eyes were open and pointed toward the darkness above our heads. “You’re right, of course,” he said finally. Then, “Would you have kept any of the others?”</p>
<p>“I didn’t,” I said. But that hadn’t been what Constantin had been asking, not really. My hands stilled on his leg, and I looked down at them while I considered what to say in response to the question he’d not asked. “Not because we were leaving, or because of any difference in our stations,” I said, quietly. “…I didn’t want anyone else. I didn’t need anyone else, if I had you.”</p>
<p>This time when I looked at him, he was smiling. “And now that you’ve truly had me what do you think?”</p>
<p>The question made me smile, and I ducked my head to hide it from him. I could feel the satisfaction radiating from him like heat from a fire, and now he wanted me to toss more wood on by praising his skills. “I think I’ll keep you,” I said. “It was…I hadn’t realized I wanted this so much.”</p>
<p>“…But would I describe it as godlike?” I added after a moment, musing, needling him. I had to press my lips together to keep from laughing.</p>
<p>His calf and foot jerked under my hands as he pushed himself up onto his elbows to look at me with raised eyebrows. “Is that a challenge?”</p>
<p>He reached for me and grabbed my arm, pulling me down on top of him before I could get away, and my laughter echoed off the cavern walls until he stopped it with his mouth.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>It may have been the same night or a different one when we lay together drowsing and heavy and satisfied. I had found the way I fit into him, my head resting in the hollow of his shoulder, my arm curled against his chest and my leg draped over his. His heart beat beneath my cheek. There was no barrier between us now, and his chest rose and fell against mine, so close that my lungs filled with every breath he took, so close his hand on my waist was mine. And, just as close, the island breathed out, all the warmth the soil had captured and the alchemy the trees and other plants had done during the day exhaled into the night air. Our edges blurred together, Constantin and me and the island. I could have stayed there for a hundred years and been happy.</p>
<p>Constantin’s hand found one of my scars, this one on my back above my shoulder blade. His fingers stayed there, exploring the raised skin. He didn’t ask the question, but I felt the pressure of it in my mind.</p>
<p>“I was shot during the Battle of the Red Spears,” I said. It had happened so long ago, and the injury had healed cleanly enough that I never thought of it.</p>
<p>Constantin’s hand stilled on my back. Then he shifted to lie on his side, propping his head up with his hand. I lay back in the grass and looked up at his frown. “You never told me.”</p>
<p>“I was embarrassed by it at the time. It was my first battle, and I lost my head. I wasn’t paying attention. …You should have seen Kurt’s face when he was patching me up.”</p>
<p>“I’m amazed you didn’t die of shame,” Constantin said, but his gaze was fixed on the scar below my collar bone, where the round had struck me before it passed through my chest.</p>
<p>“I certainly felt like I would.”</p>
<p>It was an effort for him to not look, to lie back down and look up at the shadows of branches and leaves above us. “It was better that I didn’t know,” he said. “I couldn’t have done anything more to protect you then.”</p>
<p>I had just pushed myself up on one elbow to tell him that he didn’t need to worry about protecting me when it happened—a surging feeling in my chest that made my heart beat faster and a voiceless shout that I heard in my mind, as if I’d dreamed it. Constantin had felt it, too. He sat up, tense, listening.</p>
<p>Then I could hear it, the sound of waves and a steady wind and the thrum in the air of many voices murmuring together. I could smell salt on the air and a press of bodies around me, heavy with the smells of leather and fur and sweat. I couldn’t see it, but I knew they knelt in the shadow of great, curved bones, bleached white by the sun. Vígnámrí.</p>
<p>“They’re praying,” Constantin said. “To us.” He looked at me when I sat up next to him.</p>
<p>“It’s Ullan,” I said.</p>
<p>“What does that mean?”</p>
<p>“Ullan is very…” I hesitated, searching for the word. “Calculating.”</p>
<p>“So he’s declaring himself. And he’s doing it now because…?”</p>
<p>“He must see some advantage in it for Vígnámrí, to be the first.”</p>
<p>Constantin didn’t move for a moment, staring out into the darkness of the cavern with his arms resting on his knees. I could hear the murmur of his thoughts as he considered the possibilities. His pale skin was the only thing I could see clearly, until he came to a decision and stood. When he turned and reached out to help me up, he already wore the leather tunic. I hadn’t seen him create it again; it had been as fast as a thought.</p>
<p>“As much as I would like to bury myself in you and stay in this cave forever…” he said, as he took my hand and pulled me to my feet. He smiled and looked at me as if his hands would start roaming again, setting fires under my skin. But then his smile changed, and he looked me up and down, bemused. “I wouldn’t have bet you’d choose that,” he said.</p>
<p>“Choose what?”</p>
<p>“Your blue velvet,” he said, but I had already looked down at myself and almost didn’t hear him. White flames, cool and silent, were burning on my skin. They fluttered against my arms and thighs like scraps of silk, and I felt their cool touch from my belly to my breasts and along the length of my spine, like the first touch of a thin chemise against my skin. The hearts of the flames glowed blue. I could just see the shape of my body through them.</p>
<p>“You see my gown?” I asked Constantin.</p>
<p>“Yes,” he said, “Didn’t you—” But then he stopped and looked again, and he reached out with one hand to hover over my hip, where the flames curved around his fingers and palm.</p>
<p>“You can see them.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” he said again, more slowly this time. He touched my hip and, as if he’d extinguished them, the flames around his hand disappeared. I felt his warm hand on my skin for a moment before he drew away and rubbed his other thumb over his palm.</p>
<p>“I may be able to salvage my clothes,” I said, but Constantin stopped me with a hand around my arm before I could kneel down to look for my things in the grass.</p>
<p>“Why?” he said, laughing. “They’re rags now. You don’t need them.” He took my face in his hands and kissed me. “You’re something they’ve never seen before. There aren’t any rules that apply to you.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>In the end, I took only my sword belt and my pistol from the place I’d dropped them after my fight with the <i>Nádaig baro</i>. I belted them on over my hips before Constantin put his arm around my waist and we left the cavern. The hilt of my sword and the grip of my pistol were more weighty and comforting in my hand than white fire.</p>
<p>The stars fixed themselves in the night sky above us, and the earth fixed itself under our feet. We stood in Vígnámrí in the shadow of old bones. The entire village seemed to be gathered before us, kneeling, heads down, with their hands pressed to the earth. A moment before, they had been chanting; I could still feel the words in the air. But they fell silent when we appeared, and I could see a few heads tilting, sneaking looks at the new gods that had answered their calling.</p>
<p>Ullan stood in front of them. He tensed when we appeared so suddenly, but he didn’t move, except to extend his hand palm up toward us in the gesture of respect one gave to a <i>tiern</i> before bowing. He bowed his head to Constantin. Then he looked at me.</p>
<p>“Rhíenna, daughter of Arelwin, daughter of Rowin, are you still a <i>carants</i> of Vígnámrí?”</p>
<p>
 <i> Rhíenna.</i>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>1. So when I said, "sooner or later, one way or another," what I <i>meant</i> was, "Constantin isn't going to let her avoid it for one more minute."</p>
<p>2. The title and a bit at the end of the chapter are from my favorite Pablo Neruda poem (translated by Stephen Tapscott). The end of that poem goes like this:</p>
<p>I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.<br/>I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;<br/>So I love you because I know no other way</p>
<p>Than this:  where <i>I</i> does not exist, nor <i>you</i>,<br/>So close that your hand on my chest is my hand,<br/>So close that your eyes close when I fall asleep.</p>
<p>3. True story--I ran into the the Battle of the Red Spears and promptly got myself killed because I forgot to look for the guy with the rifle. Always look for the guy with the rifle.</p>
<p>4. Lily's Yecht Fradi name is a mash-up of a few Celtic names that have meanings related to "queen," like "queen who is like a goddess" or "skillful queen". It's also a variation of Rhiannon, who is a Welsh <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhiannon">mythological queen</a>. Because as the fabulous Erin Brown says, this is some queen shit. :)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. The Blood Red Seeds of War</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I knelt by Síora’s head. She thrashed under my hands, still asleep, but some part of her must have been aware of what was happening. She was fighting it. But that only made it harder for me to catch the roots as they grew from the earth in unending ropes and curled around her neck and shoulders. They were choking her, pulling her down into the loose soil. I grabbed one that was thicker than the rest and yanked it away, closing my left hand around it when I’d lifted it a few inches from Síora’s skin to burn it to crumbling ash. I wrapped my other hand around the fur ruff at the collar of her tunic and succeeded in lifting her a little farther out of the earth that would smother her, onto my lap.</p>
<p>When I looked up at Constantin, the sky was glowing rosy orange behind him, in the east. I was running out of time.</p>
<p>“Constantin.” He wouldn’t meet my eyes, and he had closed his mind off from my thoughts.</p>
<p>“Constantin, you don’t have to do this.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>When we had arrived in Vígnámrí, the columns of huge old bones curved across the night sky above us. The king’s great roundhouse stood in the distance, surrounded by more of the bones of the <i>morimíl</i>, trophies from the Sisaig Cnameis clan’s hunts at sea. I had stood in this spot before. Behind us was the massive obsidian altar, carved all over with the islander’s spiraling symbols. During that visit, we had been met with open curiosity by most of the village. They had an ease around the <i>renaigse</i> in their midst that I wouldn’t have expected, given their history. Given our history.</p>
<p>Now the entire village seemed to be kneeling before us, and I felt as though I had been swallowed by a <i>morimíl</i>, a whale, and stood in its rib cage. It would not have been a more strange feeling than this.</p>
<p>Ullan bowed his head to Constantin. Then he looked at me, his hand still extended toward us, and said, “Rhíenna, daughter of Arelwin, daughter of Rowin, are you still a <i>carants</i> of Vígnámrí?”</p>
<p><i>Rhíenna</i>, Constantin murmured in my thoughts. At the same time, a woman with braided hair at the front of the group that knelt behind Ullan raised her head to stare at him—Slan, my mother’s sister. She set her jaw, then turned to meet my eyes. She was tense, as if she was on the edge of saying something, but then she seemed to gather herself. She sat back on her heels and looked away, though she still held one hand closed in a fist on her thigh.</p>
<p><i>Do you want me to answer him?</i> Constantin asked. I had hesitated long enough that he’d noticed.</p>
<p><i>No,</i> I replied. I pressed the inside of my arm against his hand at my waist just for a moment before I turned back to Ullan. Still, I didn’t answer him immediately. Somehow he had found out my name, the name my mother and father had meant to give me. Or perhaps the name was a fiction that he had invented. Either way, he intended to claim me in some way for Vígnámrí. I couldn’t imagine what his purpose might be, but I knew enough of Ullan to know I shouldn’t put faith in his words blindly. He was nothing if not subtle, nothing if not cunning.</p>
<p>Even now he showed no discomfort in the silence that stretched between us. He stood there, his hand held steady, his dark eyes looking me in the face without glancing away, until I said, “I’ve only ever wanted friendship with Vígnámrí, Ullan. I have always found a warm welcome here, both when I was a <i>renaigse</i> and as a daughter of the island.” I did not say as a daughter of Vígnámrí, though I certainly was. If Ullan wanted more from me, he would have to give me more in return.</p>
<p>If he noticed, Ullan gave no sign. He smiled broadly and gestured beyond himself to the rest of his clan and the village that lay behind them. “We welcome our friends, more in these times of trouble,” he said. “Come—share our fire and the fruits of the hunt. Rest here for the night.”</p>
<p>When he spoke, those who knelt behind him began to raise their heads and stand, first Slan and then, after their <i>doneigad</i> had gotten to her feet, the others, men and women and the few children of the village. It was a sign of how often Vígnámrí had been raided, that there were so few children. But wasn’t it also a sign of trust, that they were let out of their homes and in the open now?</p>
<p><i>What does it mean if we eat with them?</i> Constantin asked me as we started to walk away from the altar. Most of the villagers were slow to leave, and we soon found ourselves in the middle of a crowd. They stopped when we came near and stood out of our path, but I felt curious fingers reach out to brush my arm or my shoulder after I’d passed. Slan came up to me and touched my elbow, and I put my hand over hers. If Ullan’s words had not taken me so by surprise, I would have worried, when I had first seen her. What must she think of me? But now she wrapped her hand around my arm and looked up at me in a way that was examining but not angry or bitter.</p>
<p>“We will talk,” she said. “Tomorrow, in the morning.”</p>
<p>“Thank you,” I murmured to her.</p>
<p>She gave me one last searching glance, then nodded and let me go with a pat on the arm as she turned to go back the way we had come, in the direction of the altar.
Constantin’s fingers pressed into my side, and when I turned to him, he was looking down at me with an unspoken question in his eyes. <i>That was my mother’s sister,</i> I said. <i>Slan. She’s the</i> doneigad <i>of Vígnámrí.</i></p>
<p>
  <i>Which explains why you were so on edge just now. Are you worried about what she might think?</i>
</p>
<p><i>Yes,</i> I admitted. When I looked down, Constantin leaned over and pressed a kiss to my temple. Our hips bumped together, and Constantin laughed softly and his breath stirred my hair as he slowed to match his pace to mine.</p>
<p><i>If she had made up her mind to hate you, why would she have approached you? Right? –It will be fine,</i> he said with a conviction that I couldn’t take comfort in. Slan was the village’s <i>doneigad</i> as my mother had been before she’d been taken. If she hated me for what I’d become, would my mother have felt the same?</p>
<p>When we reached the village’s central fire, others had settled already on huge, sun-bleached logs or blankets arranged in a wide circle, and Ullan was gesturing us toward the log he stood behind.</p>
<p>
  <i>You’d better advise me on food before I get us into something we can’t easily get out of,<i> Constantin said.</i></i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i></i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i></i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>In spite of myself, I smiled. <i>Isn’t that the usual way of things?</i> I pinned his fingers against my skin when he tried to pinch me and nudged my elbow into his side. <i>If we share their food,</i> I said, over his jostling, <i>we’ll be taking a gift and making no trade in return.</i></p>
<p>
  <i>There are…obligations that come with that. We would owe them loyalty, for a night or a season or years, as long as we accept their hospitality. It wouldn’t mean only that we would do no harm while we’re here, but that we would defend the Sisaig Cnameis as if they were our own clan.</i>
</p>
<p><i>You feasted with Dunncas at Vigyigidaw,</i> Constantin said, looking at me, serious now.</p>
<p>
  <i>Yes. Aphra was leading her inquiry into the islanders’ transformations. We thought it would be a way to earn his trust. …I’ll admit it was a risk. He might have asked for any number of things in return.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>But he didn’t.</i>
</p>
<p><i>No,</i> I replied. <i>Dunncas and Ullan are two very different sorts of kings.</i></p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>We sat with them around the fire into the early morning hours as they shared meat and the plants they had gathered. Constantin sat to my left with Ullan on his other side, and he kept up a constant stream of questions, about the village and its people, their livelihoods. Ullan laughed occasionally at something Constantin had said, and I found myself smiling without having heard the words. A trio across the fire, two men and a woman, young hunters, left and returned carrying bone flutes that looked as though they had been the rib bones of smaller whales. I could see the shadows of intricate carving on them from where I sat and the finger holes the hunters had carved into them so they could be played. The bones were all different lengths, the smallest about the length of the player’s forearm and the largest so long that the hunter holding it had to rest its end on his knee, and when the hunters sat and began playing in earnest, the melody they wove made me shiver.</p>
<p>Perhaps the Sisaig Cnameis would never match a Congregation orchestra in intricacy and accomplishment, but the bone flutes gave life and feeling to the sea wind that poured through the village without ceasing. It was a song for long nights when ghosts might walk. There was an uncomfortable knot of grief in my chest, for something I could not name. There were others around the fire who looked as affected by the music as I felt. They had fallen silent and didn’t look at their companions who still murmured in their ears but away, into the darkness that the fire held off.</p>
<p>Constantin stood, and when he walked around behind me, he stroked the back of my head. He walked over to the players and knelt down next to them and held out his hand, and two of them stopped playing to speak with him. The woman gave him her flute and he bent over it, turning it in the firelight and tracing his fingers over the carvings. The second man took a breath and rearranged his fingers on his instrument and began to play a different tune, this one brighter, with ascending notes that skirled off into the air, like foam blown from the crest of a wave.</p>
<p>I almost didn’t notice when Ullan came to sit beside me. “You have not heard our bone flutes before.”</p>
<p>“I haven’t. Your traders never brought them to New Sérène.”</p>
<p>“We say, without the music, the bone is hollow, and without the heart, the breath makes no sound. –Different hearts, different breaths, different music. The <i>renaigse</i> have many beautiful instruments. But I do not think we would play them here.”</p>
<p>I looked at him, but he had settled his elbows on his knees and was watching Constantin and the hunters talking over their flutes. The sky near the horizon behind him and over the curve of his great house was tinged with red. Hikmet lay in that direction, nearly a full day’s walk away. If I reached out, I could feel the heat of the fires that still burned there and the eruption of steam where lava poured into the sea.</p>
<p>“You aren’t likely to hear <i>renaigse</i> music on Tír Fradí any longer,” I said, careful to try to pronounce the island’s name the way the islanders pronounced it. Constantin had been quick to pick up the rolled ‘r’s and accented ‘i’s. Now that I had irrevocably chosen him and these people, I couldn’t help but be aware of how poorly I spoke their language.</p>
<p>Ullan must have noticed how I stumbled over the words, but he gave no sign of it. </p>
<p>“A sad thing,” he said.</p>
<p>“You’ve invited us to share your fire, Ullan, even though we’ve driven off your allies. Why?”</p>
<p>Now he looked at me sideways. With the wavering light cast by the fire and the black paint on his face, I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed as though he was smiling. I would have said there was a wry tilt to it. “The winds have changed,” he said. “Others might call me a fool, but I have learned to study the wind.”</p>
<p>“What others? Do you mean the council of kings?”</p>
<p>He sat up and pulled one leg up to lay across the log, so he could turn to face me. He could tell me what had happened during the council. With his political instincts, Ullan must have followed all the currents of the conversation. He knew where the winds would blow in every part of the island. But if I asked, what would he expect in return?</p>
<p><i>Ask him,</i> Constantin said in my thoughts. Without looking, I knew that he still was sitting by the hunters with their flutes. He had picked up a small stone from the ground and was turning it over and over in his hands, his head bent, listening not just to the music but to my thoughts.</p>
<p>“Ullan,” I said, “what happened during the council? Dunncas only told us how it ended.”</p>
<p>“Ah,” Ullan said. He leaned back to brace himself on one hand. He had wanted me to ask. “He wouldn’t have told the rest. –The council of kings has not spoken with one voice since the <i>renaigse</i> came, but the high king’s voice has always led, until now.” He paused a moment, with a storyteller’s sense of timing, before he described the events of the council. The faces he had seen in the light from the fire pots and the shadows that had crowded along the walls of the roundhouse. The way the <i>doneia esgregaw</i> had cheered when Derdre reported that, all across the island, the <i>renaigse</i> were fleeing, to go back across the sea in their great ships.</p>
<p>Dunncas had called Ongos to speak, and at his words, the entire gathering had fallen silent. The <i>tierna harh cadachtas</i> had disappeared the day of the battle at Dorhadgenedu, and when her <i>voglendaig</i> found her in the cave that was her refuge, she was no longer herself. She had transformed into one of the spirits of the land.</p>
<p>“Mev is dead?” I asked him. I couldn’t keep the dismay out of my voice, and around the fire several faces turned toward us.</p>
<p>“Not dead,” Ullan answered. “Called. Transformed.”</p>
<p>“She’s become a <i>Nádaig</i>?”</p>
<p>He shook his head. “That is a question for a <i>doneigad</i>. Or for yourself.” That was all he would say on the matter, as if by some means I should know the answer to the question already.</p>
<p>A voice full of anger had come from the shadows where the firelight did not reach, after Ongos had spoken, and a young man from Wenshaveye, the apprentice to Catasach, had strode into the center of the circle to confront Dunncas with a raised voice and raised, tense hands.</p>
<p>“Aidan,” I said.</p>
<p>“He may be,” said Ullan. Enough talk, he had said. There is nothing to debate. They have murdered <i>en on mil frichtimen</i>; driving away the <i>renaigse</i> is nothing to that. Ullan had responded to him, and now he repeated the words he’d said in the islander tongue. They had the rhythm of an old saying.</p>
<p>When he saw that I didn’t understand, he translated, “Tír Fradí gives. Tír Fradí takes back. It is a law that even the spirits must live by. Some do not understand this. He—this Aidan—wants to avenge the death of <i>en on mil frichtimen</i>, but he does not understand the way of the spirits. He is young.”</p>
<p>Next, Dunncas had called Síora to speak and share what she knew of the man, Constantin, and his cousin, the <i>renaigse on ol menawi</i>, De Sardet. He had not said the usurpers.</p>
<p>“What did she say?”</p>
<p>Ullan hesitated.</p>
<p>
  <i>Push him. He’s evading the question.</i>
</p>
<p><i>No,</i> I answered Constantin. <i>He’ll speak.</i></p>
<p>Ullan looked at me for a long moment before he said, “Síora told of how she saw you in a dream and knew what you had done.”</p>
<p>“What else, Ullan?” He’d said nothing of what I wanted to know. How had she looked? How had she carried herself? What had Dunncas asked her?</p>
<p>“Nothing of importance,” Ullan said. He sat up and spread his hands. “She was not…” He paused, searching for the words in the common language of Gacane. Finally he settled on, “she did not have many words.</p>
<p>“But,” he added, “Síora and her sister Eseld did speak with Aidan after Dunncas left to climb the mountain. “If anyone may fight you…”</p>
<p>That was enough. I turned away from him and looked for Constantin across the fire. Beside me Ullan rose to his feet to speak with a man, a hunter about to leave the village to catch the day’s meat. I caught Ullan bowing his head to me out of the corner of my eye before the pair left, walking toward the path that led out of Vígnámrí.</p>
<p>Constantin sat next to me. “For you,” he said, holding out his hand. In his palm was a shard of obsidian, almost as long as his palm was wide. Its edges were rough; someone must have taken it off a larger piece destined to become a bowl or armor. The firelight glinted red off its facets.</p>
<p>“Thank you,” I said wryly, taking the stone from him and running my thumb along its edge.</p>
<p>He tugged at my sword belt. “You can strap it on somewhere, or turn it into a knife,” he said, and I smiled. He knew I wasn’t much for jewels or other ornaments, unless they were on the hilt of a blade.</p>
<p>Most of the clan had left the fire, some to bed, others to the hunt. The few who remained slept or murmured to each other. It was quiet enough that we could hear the sounds of nocturnal creatures over the snapping and muttering of the fire and the sighing of the wind. The night tugged at my awareness; I only had to let go, forget the warmth of Constantin next to me and the feel of the log pressing against the back of my thighs, and I would be in the cool night air and the shadows under leaves, in the tensed muscles of the stalking tenlan and the wild, beating heart of its prey.</p>
<p>Constantin leaned in close and spoke with his lips brushing the skin behind my ear. “We don’t need fires,” he said, “or sleep.” I felt his pulse quicken when I shivered. 
He took my hand and pulled me away from the fire. But when the village was behind us, I took the lead, and we went out of our bodies and into the waning hours of the night. </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>There was a commotion at the fire when we returned after sunrise, and the man Ullan had left with seemed to be in the center of it. He was holding what looked like a large, black bird by its neck. Its wings hung down, and the light reflected in many colors off its long flight feathers. There were other hunters standing around him, and they were passing objects that I couldn’t see from hand to hand, lifting them up, examining them, before passing them on. A small band of children had squeezed between legs to crouch at the feet of the hunter, and as we came up behind him, I saw one small girl raise her hand, curling her fingers beneath the claws at the end of the bird’s wing. No, not a bird—it was a beast of some sort. It had fingers, hands, and its face was the face of a reptile, covered in yellow scales that glared out of a ruff of black feathers. Its lower lip was indented with the points of sharp teeth, like those of most of the new creatures we’d encountered on the island.</p>
<p><i>What is that?</i> Constantin asked.</p>
<p>
  <i>I have no idea. I’ve never seen anything like it.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>It seems they haven’t either.</i>
</p>
<p>Slan stood apart from the group, balancing a wooden bowl on one hip and watching the children. One of the hunters had already started to pull feathers from the creature’s wing, and the smaller children were scooting around on hands and knees in the dirt, collecting the pinions for prizes. Slan looked up as we came closer and met my eyes, and Constantin followed me as I went to stand beside her.</p>
<p>“We have not seen one like this before,” she said, nodding toward the creature. “Modred watched it fly from one tree to another, and when he brought it down, it tried to run on feet like a tenlan’s before he killed it.” She looked at me, at Constantin. “In all my life, I have not met a creature without a name.”</p>
<p>Turning back to the others, she made a clucking sound, and the man nearest her looked over his shoulder. When she held out her hand, he gave her one of the objects that had so fascinated the group—a green stalk hung with a cluster of flowers. Their large petals were yellow and orange, surrounding a florid red heart of smaller petals shaped almost like a mouth. “These the hunters found growing on the branches of trees. Their roots were drinking from the air. –And they saw other things we have no names for, new things.”</p>
<p>Constantin was a thrum of excitement beside me. He held out his hand, and when Slan gave him the flowers, he traced the edges of the petals as he twirled the stalk slowly between two fingers. I could feel the crisp velvet of the petals on my fingertips. <i>We did this,</i> he said to me.</p>
<p>I tried to find the words to answer him, but the creature and the flowers had shaken me. How was it possible? I had nothing like that beast, those flowers, in my mind. We had never thought to create life.</p>
<p><i>They’re ours,</i> Constantin said.</p>
<p>
  <i>I can’t…</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>You can’t believe it? –But can’t you feel it?</i>
</p>
<p>I was shaking my head when Constantin returned the flowers to Slan. She tucked them into the wide bowl she carried, among a small pile of carved obsidian stones, and eyed me for a moment before she spoke. “Help an old woman,” she said, hefting the bowl a little. “I am going to make an offering at Bedrí.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>Constantin stayed back when Slan and I left the village, and when I asked him why, he said only that he was going to try to catch Ullan. Then he cut me off, putting that barrier between our thoughts, as if he knew I would have had a thousand cautions and warnings. Of course he did. When I turned to look at him as Slan and I reached the path out of the village, he had waylaid a girl who was running away from the fire pit with a fistful of feathers. He bent over and said something to her, pointing toward the log where we had sat the night before. He sent her off grinning, bouncing with excitement, and then he straightened and looked for me where he knew I was watching him and raised his hand in a casual farewell.</p>
<p>He may not have been able to hear my thoughts, but that didn’t stop me from thinking them long and hard in his direction all the way to the hollow in the rocks at the mouth of Bedrí.</p>
<p>Slan seemed content enough to walk in silence when we left the village, but she noticed my distraction. When we reached the mouth of the cave, she touched my arm and gestured toward the stone carvings and other offerings that had been left by others who’d come before us. “Place the offerings there,” she said. She rested her hand for a moment on my chest, over my heart. “Now is a time for quiet.”</p>
<p>She did not seem to see the white flames that swayed and flickered in response to her movements. What was I wearing in her eyes? Did she still see me in the uniform of the Congregation? I could feel the skin of her palm, the calluses on her fingers and other spots on her hands that were worn as smooth as old paper.</p>
<p>I climbed the shelf of rock that led to the cave and tried to do as she’d asked of me as I laid the stones on either side of the entrance. I knelt to place the flowers last, securing the stalk between two stones so the blooms hung like a banner. It should have been something like a meditation. If I had come here as a member of the clan, if the guardian had still been alive and stood aside and watched as I put down the offerings…would I have felt awed? Would I have felt a rightness to it?</p>
<p>I had killed the guardian of this place, like so many others. I had no right to leave an offering here.</p>
<p>“Come,” Slan said, when I had jumped back down. She led me across the clearing to a spot beneath an old tree with a wide, leafy crown. The roots near the trunk were worn smooth; we weren’t the first to sit here, looking back at the cave.</p>
<p>“Where is the guardian, Slan?” I asked. The <i>Nádaig</i>’s body was gone from the clearing.</p>
<p>“We returned him to the earth.” She inclined her head toward the cave. When I said nothing, she added, “Bedrí will have his guardian again, when one of us answers the call.”</p>
<p>I knew what I should say, but the words could not measure up to what I had done. “Why are you speaking to me?” I asked her instead. “I killed your guardian. I—”</p>
<p>I stopped when Slan said something in Yecht Fradí too fast for me to catch and leaned forward to cup her hand against my cheek, over my mark. Her touch was gentle, but her eyes on mine were fierce when she said, “Quiet now. You did not know. You came here with the eyes of the ones who raised you.”</p>
<p>She must have seen my doubts on my face, because she continued, “What you did… You did it for him, yes? That is what Síora told us during the council.”</p>
<p>“Yes. It didn’t start that way, but yes. –But I know that is no excuse.”</p>
<p>“Hmm.” Slan stroked my cheek, leaning back, and tapped the ground in front of her with the toe of one boot. “Sit here. –Sit,” she repeated when I hesitated.</p>
<p>I pushed myself off my perch on the root to sit cross-legged between her feet like a child, and she combed her fingers through my hair. If I had been a child, it might have been comforting.</p>
<p>“Your mother and I would make each other’s hair,” Slan said. “I don’t know the word—like this.” One of her hands left my head, and I turned to see her gesture to the braids she wore in rows between her branches.</p>
<p>“You would braid each other’s hair.”</p>
<p>“Braid,” she repeated slowly, smiling at me. “Yes. May I?”</p>
<p>I nodded and then had to turn around again when my eyes started to burn with tears. Slan kept pulling her fingers through my hair, hand over hand, sweeping it back from my temples and gathering it away from the nape of my neck until I realized that, impossibly, there was more of it than there should have been. She stopped when I reached back and dug my fingers into hair that fell down past my shoulders. I had kept it cut short for years, since the prince had first decided to apprentice me to Sir de Courcillon. It hadn’t been so long this morning. Constantin had said nothing about it. Had it grown just in this moment?</p>
<p>Slan gently pulled my hand away and gathered my hair up again before she began to separate it, draping sections of it over my shoulders. She started on the first braid, plaiting the hair tightly against my scalp, her fingers deft as she negotiated her way between the branches that grew from my head. “I know what you feel, <i>magem</i>,” she said, her voice only a murmur. “I have felt it, too. It is our nature, when we feel great pain, to look for more pain.</p>
<p>“But in life there is always a balance, joy with sadness, good with bad. It is a cycle like every cycle. So,” she said, leaning forward to speak close to my ear while I bit back the tears that would escape if I let them, “you must look for the good.</p>
<p>“To see my sister’s daughter in Vígnámrí, in the tunic of a <i>voglendaig</i> and with the marks of her bond—that is only good.”</p>
<p>“Even knowing what she has done?” I choked out.</p>
<p>She finished the first braid, tying it off with something and smoothing it down with her hand. “Even knowing what she has done. –But I think you do not know what that is.”
I turned to look at her over my shoulder. “What do you mean?” I asked, but she only shook her head.</p>
<p>“That is a question for Derdre and Valan, Vedleug’s <i>doneigad</i>. There are many stories on Tír Fradí, many rituals. The Cengeden Anedas have kept that one.” Her hands stilled on my hair for a moment before she started to braid again. “You should go soon. Do not stay in Vígnámrí. –I say this because I know Ullan. He is trying to get something from you.”</p>
<p>Slan’s fingers in my hair, the repetition of her braiding, calmed me enough that I could speak without fighting tears. “He called me… He pretended to know the name my mother would have given me.”</p>
<p>“No.” Slan let go of my hair and rested her hands on my shoulders for a moment. “That is the name Arelwin would have given you. Rhíenna. Ullan must have learned it from me. Since the day I knew you were alive, my mind has whispered your name. –I felt always like I could sing it.” She laughed, low in her throat, but sobered a moment later. “The day of the battle at Dorhadgenedu, I saw many things and did not know where I was. I think Ullan must have found me. I think he heard me call out to you.”</p>
<p>“What does he want from us?”</p>
<p>She picked up the braid again and quickly finished it, securing it at the nape of my neck. “The friendship of the gods. To turn harsh winds away from Vígnámrí and his king.”</p>
<p>Hearing that, I could not fault Ullan for wanting what he did. How many times had harsh winds come to Vígnámrí? The winds had brought conquerors to their shore and taken my mother away, and others, leaving only the dead and grieving in their wake. If we could make him understand that we meant no harm to his clan, that we wanted peace for Tír Fradí, perhaps that would convince him that his schemes were unnecessary.</p>
<p>I reached out for Constantin with my thoughts, but I couldn’t feel him. He still was keeping himself closed off from me. <i>Constantin, don’t play games with him,</i> I thought. Some part of me hoped for an answer, though he couldn’t hear me.</p>
<p>Slan’s voice called me back. “Your mother would…braid…my hair when I was a little child. And she would always pull if I moved too much—like this,” she said, tugging on the braid she held. I laughed. As she finished my braids, Slan told me stories—about how it had felt to watch her elder sister’s bonding ceremony and see Arelwin lift her chin to meet the guardian’s stare when he had come out of the night, how Arelwin had healed a hunter who had fallen from the rocks and when he’d woken he’d brought her gifts each day, plants, shells, carvings that he’d made with his own hands, until they were bonded. I saw my mother as she had been through her sister’s eyes, bold and sunny and stubborn, quick to laugh and unafraid to go down paths others had not walked.</p>
<p>“Now that you are here,” Slan said, “Arelwin can live again.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>Constantin met us on the path to Vígnámrí, appearing so suddenly at my side that Slan cried out.</p>
<p>“Forgive me,” he said. He smiled and rested his hand on her arm for a moment before he turned to me. “Look at you.” I reached up to feel the braids on the back of my head and their leather bindings for what must have been the sixth time, and Constantin reached out too, his fingers brushing over mine. “You look like a warrior goddess.”</p>
<p>“Frightening?”</p>
<p>“Fierce,” he said, “and beautiful. –But where did all that hair come from?”</p>
<p>“A minor miracle,” I said as we started walking again. Day by day, I was learning to be comfortable with things that could not be explained. More comfortable, in any case. Or perhaps it was that I had larger things to worry about than how quickly my hair grew.</p>
<p>Slan was watching us, and Constantin leaned past me to say to her, “It is a miracle, truly. She treats her hair like a weed that needs to be cut down.”</p>
<p>“Point taken,” I said, and he gave me an unrepentant smile. “Did you speak with Ullan while we were gone?” I asked aloud, so Constantin would know he could speak in front of Slan.</p>
<p>I felt the touch of his mind before he answered. “Yes,” he said. “He invited me into his home, and we talked.”</p>
<p>“And?”</p>
<p>“And I told him what he could do to earn our friendship, since he seems so keen on it.” When I looked at him, he added, “It’s what he wants, and it costs us nothing. In the end, he may be able to help us. He may have already—we have new names.”</p>
<p>“He named us?”</p>
<p><i>I couldn’t let him think that he could call you Rhíenna,</i> Constantin said in my mind. “<i>Ciotach</i>,” he said, squeezing my hand with its scar, “and <i>Deasach</i>.” He placed one hand on his chest.</p>
<p>“The left-handed and the right-handed,” Slan said over my shoulder.</p>
<p>“It’s clever,” Constantin said.</p>
<p>“Ullan has a clever mind.” Slan had cast her gaze off to the side. Was she thinking about what she had told me earlier? She knew Ullan, and perhaps part of her respected and valued the gifts he possessed as a leader, but still there was no love between them.</p>
<p>“So why not put it to work for us,” Constantin said. He let me go to reach into a pouch he wore at his waist. He turned my hand palm up and put the object he’d fished out into it—the obsidian stone he’d given me the night before, wrapped with a cord of leather that held in place a fan of black feathers.</p>
<p>“The little girl,” I said, looking up at him.</p>
<p>“I asked her to make it for you. Do you like it?”</p>
<p>I turned the stone over in my hands. I may not have been one for ornaments, but all the same, it was beautiful. The shine on the rough facets of the obsidian contrasted with the sleek, muted blackness of the feathers. The leather cord had been wrapped in neat, even rows around the stone, even though the hands that had done it had been small. I had never had or wanted something like this before, but I would wear this. It fit with a part of me that I was only just discovering. “Yes,” I said.</p>
<p>“Here,” he said, stopping me with a hand on my arm. He took the stone from my hand and tied the ends of the leather cord behind my neck. The stone rested just below my collarbone, and the feathers brushed my chest.</p>
<p>When we carried on, Slan fell back to walk behind us. I could feel her eyes on me, and I didn’t think I imagined that she was smiling.</p>
<p>We spent the rest of that day in Vígnámrí, talking and sharing work with the clan. Constantin didn’t hesitate to throw himself into any of it, climbing up onto the roof of one of the roundhouses to help with repairs and carrying wood to stack for the night’s bonfire. Every time I looked at him he was talking or laughing, more at ease around other people than I had ever seen him in our lives before.</p>
<p>I stayed with Slan as she went from house to house, collecting offerings from some and checking on others who had been sick or injured. She began to teach me some of what she knew of herbs and healing. Compared to the handful of skills I had to field dress a wound or brew a potion, Slan’s knowledge seemed to have no end. She had a lifetime of experience, and I could hope to learn only the smallest part of that in the time we had. Constantin and I had decided to leave in the morning, first for New Sérène and then to visit Derdre before we traveled to Vigyigidaw.</p>
<p>Several times during the day our path crossed with Ullan’s. He said nothing to me beyond a greeting, but the first time I saw him, I saw his eyes catch on the stone I wore around my neck. And several times after that, he glanced at Constantin’s gift before looking quickly away.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>
  <i>Can you feel them?</i>
</p>
<p>We were lying together on one of the blankets beside the fire. Like the night before, most of the village had stayed awake with us into the early hours, but the few who remained were sleeping. We lay on our backs, looking up at the stars and the glowing ashes that rose from the fire. Constantin’s free hand held mine, our fingers entwined together. Now he rolled onto his side, shifting me with him, and stretched to press my hand down against the hard-packed earth.</p>
<p>When he asked, when I reached out, I could feel them—creatures I had never encountered before. Tiny birds with jewel-toned feathers just starting to wake in the highest branches. Beasts that crouched wide-eyed under ferns and fallen logs, sensing the world around them with quiet, snuffling breaths and long, sensitive fingers. The black feathered beasts that clung to tree trunks alone or in pairs, asleep, their yellow faces tucked under their arms. And plants—the night wind blew over ferns and flowers that had never grown on Tír Fradí before now and told me their shapes.</p>
<p><i>Yes,</i> I answered. <i>Can you?</i></p>
<p><i>Through you,</i> he said. It was still night. He wouldn’t have all of his senses until the sun rose.</p>
<p>He let go of my hand to pull me against his chest. He was quiet for so long that I thought that he wouldn’t say anything else, but then he asked, <i>What are you thinking?</i></p>
<p>It was such an unexpected question that I laughed. <i>You know what I’m thinking.</i></p>
<p>
  <i>I don’t, actually. Your thoughts are usually to the point. But not now.</i>
</p>
<p><i>No,</i> I replied after a moment. <i>I suppose not.</i> Now that he’d said it, I tried to pull my thoughts into some kind of order. <i>I…still don’t believe myself to be capable of the things we’ve done.</i></p>
<p>I felt Constantin’s laughter against my back. <i>What happens to a god if she doesn’t believe in herself?</i> He meant to tease me, but the question echoed in my mind. I had saved Constantin, but in doing that, I had become someone—<i>something</i>—else. I didn’t know who this new person was or what she wanted.</p>
<p>Constantin felt how the question affected me and pushed himself up to press his lips to my cheek. “You will,” he said aloud when I looked up at him. “You’re still <i>you</i>, Lily.”</p>
<p>Much later, I came back to myself suddenly. Something was wrong. I rose to kneel on the blanket and pressed both my hands to the earth, and then I felt it again, the reverberation of footsteps in the woods. Constantin’s eyes met mine just as one voice, then many, raised a ululating cry.</p>
<p>We were on our feet, and my saber was already in my hand when the first of the Sisaig Cnameis threw open their doors, carrying their own weapons. Slan was among them, pointing in the direction from which the cries had come before she raised her hands and began to chant. I couldn’t hear the words, but I saw her lips moving and the ghostly fire that kindled in her palms as she called on the earth.</p>
<p>Ullan found us by the fire as the first of the strangers came out of the trees. Their cheeks were streaked with white; their brows glowed white in the darkness. Gaís Rad. Síora’s clan. “Help us,” Ullan said. He grabbed my arm, abrupt and demanding. “Drive them out.”</p>
<p>“I need to find Síora. If she’ll listen—”</p>
<p>He cut me off. “You are the reason she is here and the reason Vígnámrí must fight. We have given you hospitality,” he said, and he let go of me to tap the stone that rested on my chest with one long finger. “What will you give us in return?”</p>
<p>A gift. We had taken neither food nor drink while we’d been with the Sisaig Cnameis, but Constantin’s gift to me had come from the village, the stone he’d picked up by the fire, the feathers from the creature the hunters had harvested, and the leather cord the girl had used to create the necklace. All were items that no one would miss, but they were enough for Ullan to take the opportunity to bind us.</p>
<p>I expected an angry denial from Constantin, but he surprised me. “We’ll help you,” he said, his voice even. His hand was on Ullan’s arm in a show of support even as he pushed his hand away from me. “Tell your people to stay out of our way.”</p>
<p>
  <i>Constantin, we can’t let him think he has power over us.</i>
</p>
<p><i>He doesn’t. Let him think what he wants for now.</i> Constantin turned toward the fighting, and I followed. Síora’s clan had forced their way past the first of the roundhouses and into the trampled dirt clearing around the fire. They had momentum on their side. Even as more of the Sisaig Cnameis ran to join the battle, they fetched up against their kin, who were being pushed back. Behind us, Ullan shouted commands in <i>Yecht Fradí</i>, and his fighters, men and women both, roared in response, digging in, holding their enemies off with spear and sword and muscle. All the while, the ground was torn apart as Slan and someone unseen on the other side called roots that wrapped themselves around the limbs of the unwary to pull them down.</p>
<p>
  <i>I need to find Síora.</i>
</p>
<p>Constantin knelt beside me to press his hand to the earth. He glanced at me, then looked away toward the battle. "Be careful, Lily,” he said aloud. When I started running, the ground shifted under my feet as the roots he called snaked through the air ahead of me, parting the knot of people and making me a path.</p>
<p>I shouted her name as I shoved between two of Ullan’s fighters, into a crowd of white-streaked faces. Hands reached for me. A hand landed heavy on my shoulder, and I felt a club arcing toward me before I saw it. But Constantin had seen it first—in the moment it took me to connect the club to an arm and a face, Constantin had brought a root out of the ground to wrap around the man and pull him away from me.</p>
<p>“Síora!”</p>
<p>I couldn’t see her. I shouted her name again. I was the reason she was here; she would find me. I would make it easy for her.</p>
<p>One of the Gaís Rad fell backward, jostling me, sending me off balance, and another hand wrapped around my left arm. This time I was faster. My hand closed on my opponent’s arm, giving me the leverage I needed to turn toward the blow that was coming. I brought my saber up to parry, but as I did, all the force went out of the woman I was facing. I looked up to see her face turn pale, bloodless. Her eyes rolled back. She fell at my feet, her weight dragging at me, and a white flit of fire jumped from my palm as I let her go. Already her arm was gone, turned to ash, and the fire I’d set in her was spreading.</p>
<p>Constantin was calling me, and I forced my eyes to look away from her ashes. </p>
<p>“<i>Monisainaig!</i>”</p>
<p>Eseld. Her voice was harsh, and her people fell back from her as she came toward me. A root burst from the ground in front of me and shot toward her like a spear. But she was quick, so quick. She dodged and leaned down to take hold of the root, pulling it. In the same movement, she jumped to plant one foot on its base, where it was thicker, and drove herself toward me from that height. I had to brace my left hand on the blade of my saber to block the blow from her sword, and still she knocked me back a step. Fire ran down my blade.</p>
<p>“Eseld, let me—”</p>
<p>“No!” she grated. She bore down, and all my muscles strained to hold her off.</p>
<p>Behind her, the root whipped around, seeking her neck. Eseld ducked, slipping under my saber. I fell forward, and the root Constantin had called struck me in the face, crumbling to ash as it touched me. The ashes blinded me, but I could feel Eseld behind me. I pivoted.</p>
<p>Time seemed to stretch in the moment I knew that she’d gotten past my guard, like the echoes I still sometimes heard of a gunshot that seemed to reverberate through the air for minutes before the round struck me. The point of Eseld’s sword found my back in the space below my ribs, and she stabbed in and up.</p>
<p>A gasped breath, and then the pain swept over me, a line of it that radiated white hot through my chest. My legs shook. My hand couldn’t keep hold of my saber. I had expected it, but there was no way to prepare for it.</p>
<p>I took another breath and found that I could still breathe. In my mind, Constantin was shouting. Eseld had paused too long, and the roots had found her, wrapping around her legs and climbing up her chest as she struggled. Others of her clan pushed past me to help her. Síora wasn’t among them.</p>
<p>Why wasn’t she with her sister?</p>
<p>I looked for Constantin and then saw her and several other warriors crouched and padding toward him. Their trousers were wet up to their thighs. They had separated from the rest of their clan and approached Vígnámrí from the river to get behind us. Constantin felt my fear when I saw them, and his eyes met mine. But I was already moving. There was a loud <i>crack</i> as the air filled the space where I had been, and Eseld’s blade fell to the ground as I unformed myself to reappear between Síora and Constantin. Fire bled out of my wound; I could feel it streaming down my leg.</p>
<p>“Síora, stop!”</p>
<p>Behind me, Constantin was turning. Síora had raised her stone blade to draw it across Constantin’s throat or strike him a blow on the back of the head with the pommel, but she took a step back when I appeared. Her eyes were wide when they met mine.</p>
<p>“Síora!” Eseld’s voice carried over the sounds of fighting, strained with rage.</p>
<p>Síora drew a breath and switched her grip on the hilt of her sword. Then she drove the blade home.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>1. I'm still here, I promise! Work was a beast in July, and most days I didn't have enough brain cells left in the evenings to write anything decent. But I'm getting back on track.</p>
<p>2. The title of this chapter is from "The Last Rose of Cintra" from Netflix's The Witcher OST. The version of this song that I like the best doesn't seem to be on YouTube anymore, but I'm hoping I can find it so I can share it with you for a later chapter.</p>
<p>3. The names that Ullan gives Constantin and Lily, <a href="https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/left-handed">ciotach</a> and <a href="https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/right-handed">deasach</a> are Irish Gaelic.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Save Us From Harm</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Síora drove her sword under my ribs, two things happened at once:  roots snared her arms and chest and pulled her away from me, and the flames that clothed me dimmed and then flared brighter than before. That power I could not contain welled up in me and burst out. There was a gray flash, as if Tír Anemen had flooded into this world, and Síora’s head fell back as she crumpled, held up only by the cage that Constantin had woven around her. The men she had brought with her fell heavy and disjointed to the ground. Behind me, there was a clatter as weapons knocked against each other and thumps as their owners fell with them.</p>
<p>Constantin, pale and breathless, was beside me, one arm wrapped around my shoulders and his other hand on the hilt of Síora’s sword. My name was almost a moan coming out of his mouth. He started to pull on the sword but stopped when I gasped.</p>
<p>“No, take it out,” I managed shakily, and I wrapped my hands around the lower end of the hilt and pushed. He began to pull again, and when the tip of the blade came free, he threw it away from us. As soon as the blade was out, I could breathe easier. I had control of my limbs again.</p>
<p>Constantin pulled my hands away from the wound and bent down to look at it, and when he did, I saw that my hands were red with blood. “Constantin, you’re bleeding,” I said. Had he been injured?</p>
<p>“Only my hand.” His voice was strained. When I put my hand on his shoulder, he was shaking.</p>
<p>He pressed his bleeding hand to the wound that Síora had given me. His touch staunched the flames that were leaking out of me. My flesh knit together, until the puncture was only a slash of shiny pink skin, partially obscured by his hand and flickering white flames. It itched abominably, and I fidgeted under his touch. He grabbed my hip to keep me still. “Don’t move.”</p>
<p>He stepped around to my back to heal the other wound, and as I rubbed the now-smooth skin on my belly the process repeated itself. He sighed when he’d finished, and for a moment, he rested his forehead against my shoulder before he stepped closer to wrap his arms around me, his chest against my back.</p>
<p>“Are you well?” he asked. He spoke into my shoulder, and his voice was muffled.</p>
<p>I slid my hands down his arms until I could twine my fingers with his. “Yes.” I took a deep breath, without pain, and Constantin felt my relief at it. His fingers tensed around mine briefly before he relaxed. I turned my head and leaned away within the circle of his arms until I could just meet his eyes. “I don’t think they could have killed me,” I said. “It hurt”—I paused as we both considered what that meant, that we could still be hurt, still feel pain—“but I could stand it. …It wasn’t enough to kill me.”</p>
<p>He let me go and walked past me. The packed earth around us was overgrown now with grass and bushes. Where Constantin had knelt during the battle, the grass was green and growing, and the bushes bent under the weight of clusters of ripe berries. But at my feet, where I had bled, there were only brown stalks and withered leaves. </p>
<p>I heard it first—a sound like a snake slithering in the grass. Then I saw how Constantin’s hands were tensed, how he stared down at the place where Síora had fallen.</p>
<p>“No!” I dropped to my knees next to her, careful to keep my left hand closed against my chest. But the roots Constantin called were swift—even as I ripped them away from her neck and face, more were coming. They grew thicker, as broad and strong as tree branches, and they pulled her down into the broken soil. Síora began to thrash in her sleep, and muffled cries came from her throat. “Constantin, <i>stop</i>!”</p>
<p>Constantin only glanced at me. He brought both hands up and curled his fingers, and more roots burst over us, tearing at my hand, tearing at Síora’s face until her skin bled. </p>
<p>“Constantin—”</p>
<p>“She would have killed you,” he said. He didn’t look at me this time.</p>
<p>“She can’t.”</p>
<p>“She can’t kill a god?” His mouth twisted, and I heard the thought he sent to me, a simple and undeniable truth, <i>We did.</i></p>
<p>“She doesn’t deserve this. I won’t let you do it, Constantin.” My voice shook. My hands shook. But I made myself look away from him and reach out with both hands to grab the roots as they curled over her and burn them away to nothing.</p>
<p>Constantin’s thoughts in my head were fierce and pleading, not formed into words, not exactly, but they had the pressure of feelings. It will be fast. It’s for the best. For our safety. I ignored them, focusing on task of grabbing and pulling with my right hand and burning with my left. “Don’t make me watch that again,” he said, when I didn’t respond.</p>
<p>
  <i>Let her go.</i>
</p>
<p>He stood up straighter and lowered his hands, and for a moment, I thought he was listening. Then he said, “We could let the sun decide.”</p>
<p>He closed his mind off from me before I fully understood the meaning of the words. When I looked up, the sky was glowing rosy orange behind Constantin, in the east. The roots had stilled. But the sun was just below the horizon, and when it rose, his power would be greater than my own. I wouldn’t be able to match him. I was running out of time.</p>
<p>“Constantin.” He wouldn’t meet my eyes, and he had closed his mind off from my thoughts. “–Constantin, you don’t have to do this. Let me talk to her. I might be able to convince her to stand down.”</p>
<p>“This is a mistake.”</p>
<p>“Constantin, it’s Síora.”</p>
<p>“Yes, and you know her, Lily. Do you think she’ll walk away from this battle?”</p>
<p>No. No, but I had to try. “Let me try.”</p>
<p>Finally he nodded, his lips pressed together in a thin, pale line. He turned away, and his hands relaxed. “If they attack us again, they die,” he said. He didn’t look at me.</p>
<p>I stood clumsily and too quickly and had to lean over and rest my hands on my thighs. If I could find my way to Tír Anemen, I could reach Síora in her dreams and speak with her. If. I hadn’t thought to go to the world of spirits since I’d found myself there accidentally. But if I waited until Síora woke, she might attack me again on sight. Or we would have to bind her. Neither option promised to end well. I would have to find a way through.</p>
<p>Constantin might have helped me, but his back was turned and he was gone from my mind. When I tried to reach for him, I felt nothing.</p>
<p>I remembered what he had told me, about thinking of the magic as <i>calling</i> and <i>becoming</i>. When I thought of Tír Anemen, I could almost feel the heavy chill of the air, the hush. I could almost see the ghost fires that moved as if they had life within them and the unbroken darkness of the sky. It was as if the world of spirits was calling to me. As if it lay just over the horizon. And then the horizon was here, where I stood, and I knew that if I took a step, I would cross over.</p>
<p>Constantin must have felt the change in the air. Just as I was about to cross the divide between one world and the other, he stopped me. “Lily, wait.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>The silence was the first thing that I noticed. Constantin stood only a few feet away from me, looking toward where I had been. Síora and her warriors still lay on the ground around us, asleep. But I couldn’t hear their breathing or Constantin’s footsteps when he walked away or the blood dripping from his hand. Flames burned soundlessly around me, flickering on the blades of grass that had grown in the clearing by Vígnámrí’s bonfire and in the crowns of the trees that shaded the village.</p>
<p>The first light of dawn fell on Constantin and the sleepers in the other world. Here, in Tír Anemen, the light of the ghost fires made pallid gray echoes of the roundhouses and curving columns of bone and the plants that surrounded me.</p>
<p>Síora lay at my feet. Her body in the other world was still, but her spirit was fighting. Flashes of it, a gray form, more substantial than a ghost, appeared above her body as she pushed against the roots that bound her in her dream.</p>
<p>“Síora…” I was afraid to reach between the worlds and touch the roots; I might burn her to ash with them. But I reached down and wrapped my hand around hers to pull her spirit from her body.</p>
<p>She grabbed my wrist with her other hand, her eyes wide as she glanced this way and that, her breaths shallow and fast. Then she jerked her hand back when flames flowed down my arm and over her fingers. She pulled herself loose and staggered away from me.</p>
<p>“Why did you bring me here?”</p>
<p>“To talk,” I said. “In a safe place.”</p>
<p>She looked behind me, where Constantin had gone, then down at her companions who had fallen beside her. I stood back as she knelt beside them. She tried to put her hand on one man’s shoulder and gasped when it passed through. Only then did I see that man’s face clearly. It was Aidan. I recognized his high cheekbones and the line of his jaw beneath the swirls of blue paint that he wore. He had joined Síora and Eseld against us. Another man from Wenshaveye lay beside him, and another face among them wore the streaks of red and black that marked one of the Vegaig Awelas clan. Vinbarr’s clan. They weren’t only avenging <i>en on mil frichtimen</i>. They were avenging Catasach, Vinbarr, Céra.</p>
<p>We had more than we thought to answer for, Constantin and I.</p>
<p>“They aren’t dead, only sleeping. They’re safe.”</p>
<p>Síora glared up at me and clenched her jaw. “Why am I here?” she asked again.</p>
<p>“To keep them safe. Síora…I convinced Constantin not to hurt you, but I may not be able to do it again. If he thinks you threaten our lives, he’ll try to kill you.” I took a breath. “And I won’t let you hurt him.</p>
<p>“Dunncas has welcomed us to Vigyigidaw,” I said, when she turned away and said nothing. “We don’t mean any harm to the Yecht Fradí or the Gaís Rad, even now. Walk away from this fight. Go home with your sister and live.”</p>
<p>Her narrow shoulders shook, and when she turned back to me, her mouth was pinched in a smile, though her brow was drawn. “Dunncas…” she said. “They say it is the way of things. But it isn’t <i>right</i>. You lied. You betrayed us all. –You killed <i>en on mil frichtimen,</i> and they say it is the way of things.”</p>
<p>I knelt across from her. “If there had been another way for Constantin to leave the sanctuary alive, I would have taken it. There was only one choice I could make.”</p>
<p>“You chose badly.”</p>
<p>She stared at me with hard eyes. Perhaps I had thought that we could come back from this and be—not friends, as we were before—but allies at least. But the cold resolve on her face told me the truth. I had done something unforgiveable. She would never see me as a friend again.</p>
<p>I stood. “Síora, we are bound to the volcano. We’ve destroyed cities. Do you think this is a fight you can win? Think of how many will die if you come against us again. You can choose to save them.” I said it to persuade her. But the best persuasive arguments always carried truth, and this was a truth that I did not want to acknowledge. I had the power of a god. I had used it. And I would use it again, if it meant keeping Constantin safe.</p>
<p>“They would choose to die for this fight,” Síora said.</p>
<p>“But is that what you want?” I glanced from her face to Aidan’s. The few times I had met him, he had been quick to come to the defense of his master, quick to anger. In sleep, his face was unlined. He looked as young as he was. Síora kept her hands at his shoulder, though she couldn’t truly touch him while she was in Tír Anemen.</p>
<p>She made a small, choked sound low in her throat and turned away from me to look down at him, at all of them.</p>
<p>“Sleep,” I told her. “You’re safe.”</p>
<p>As I turned to leave her, the particles of her spirit drifted away on the still air of Tír Anemen, as if she couldn’t hold herself together any longer. In the other world, she shifted in her sleep, her brow furrowed, and her hands closed on something in her dream.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>Ullan stared at me, still and quiet, when I woke his spirit in Tír Anemen. When I knelt in front of him, he pushed himself up to sit. For a moment, he looked down at his hand where it rested on the ground, flames licking around his fingers.</p>
<p>“Ullan.” He met my eyes.</p>
<p>I untied the leather strap from around my neck and held the necklace that Constantin had given to me in my palm. Constantin wanted me to give the king a message, but the words he’d given me to say didn’t come easily. <i>Remind him of who we are,</i> he’d said.</p>
<p>“Who is the beating heart of the volcano?” I asked Ullan, careful to keep my voice steady. “Who brings new life to the island?</p>
<p>“Whose gifts are these?” I asked, nodding toward the obsidian stone and feathers.</p>
<p>Ullan’s gaze was as sharp as ever, but he didn’t hesitate before he answered, “Yours, Ciotach. The two of you.”</p>
<p>“Remember that when you wake.” His spirit dissipated, and I reached through to the other world and placed the necklace in Ullan’s hand. It might end up in the fire, but in the moment after he woke, at least, Ullan would know that Constantin had bested him.</p>
<p>That <i>we</i> had. Constantin had given this victory to me. He wanted me to say the words. He wanted me to believe them.</p>
<p>Constantin had come to stand over Ullan, and his gaze caught on the necklace. He bent down and reached out just as I pulled my hand back. I felt the barest brush of his fingers on mine. And when he looked up, by chance, our eyes met across worlds.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The title of this chapter is from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyjlIVLQGtU">"Bad Decisions"</a> by The Strokes, which is basically Lily and Constantin's relationship in five minutes. These lyrics in particular are very Lily:</p>
<p>Pick up your gun<br/>Put up those gloves<br/>Save us from harm<br/>Safe or alone</p>
<p>This song and their song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-W6whvn8Bs">"Selfless"</a> basically kept me sane during July. "Selfless" is part of my playlist for this series, too, but the feeling is more Constantin at the end of Anemhaid.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Faces of Nature</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <i>Síora</i>
  </p>
</div><p>Síora woke and did not know where she was at first, though the weave of her mat under her hand and the light on the stone walls should have been familiar. She and Eseld had laid more logs than usual on the fire before they had led the war party out of the village the night before, so it would still be burning when they returned. Neither one of them had wondered aloud <i>if</i> they would return.</p>
<p>The sun shone through the cracks around the heavy stone door. She looked up, past the fire, and saw her sister where she should be, lying on her own mat, her back to the center of the room.</p>
<p>But they shouldn’t be here. They had been in Vígnámrí, and the ambush had gone wrong, very wrong. She remembered being strung tight with anticipation, aware of the weight and sound of every footfall as she crept toward the usurper, the deathbringer. Then De Sardet had appeared out of the empty air. Her face had been pale, her eyes wide. She’d spoken her name, and Síora had hesitated, suddenly unable to do the thing that she had known she must do, until she heard Eseld shout.</p>
<p>She had stabbed De Sardet.</p>
<p>She had stabbed De Sardet, and then she’d been pulled backward by roots that wrapped around her chest and waist.</p>
<p>She lay still in front of the fire. Her eyes were open, but she saw the flames only as an indistinct, flickering glow. The rest of their home was in shadow. There had been something else…</p>
<p>She had dreamed. A true dream.</p>
<p>Remembering it, she felt the cold again, as if it was rolling off their hearth fire. The edges of the room seemed darker.</p>
<p>She remembered what De Sardet had said in the dream, and the remembering got her up off her mat. She did what she hadn’t done since they were children, just after their father had died, and went to lie on Eseld’s mat, tucking up against Eseld’s back.</p>
<p>Síora felt Eseld’s shoulders tense when she woke. “A sír…” At first Eseld gave no sign that she’d heard her when she murmured, but when Síora reached for her arm, Eseld finally rolled over onto her back and looked at her. She was frowning, and her brows weighed heavy on her eyes.</p>
<p>“How are we here?”</p>
<p>Eseld looked past her, at the fire, at the roof of stone over their heads.</p>
<p>“How am I to know, Síora?” Her sister’s voice was sharp as a knife. She must have an idea, just as Síora did. But just as Síora did, she did not want that idea in her head. She feared what it meant. And when she was afraid, Eseld was quick to anger. Their mother had been the same.</p>
<p>“Have they truly taken en on mil frichtimen’s place?” She didn’t know why she spoke the words in that moment. They weren’t any less terrible spoken into the air than they were trapped in her mind.</p>
<p>But there was no other explanation, was there? Magic had put them to sleep, De Sardet’s magic. And it must have been her magic and the deathbringer’s that had brought them home without their knowing. When she had seen De Sardet in Tír Anemen this time, Síora had not recognized her at first. She was so changed—a woman ablaze with a ghostly fire that did her no harm, her face and the bare skin of her arms and legs pale and glowing from within, her eyes as blue as the sky in the world of the living, and her head crowned with the branches of an on ol menawi who had deepened her bond with Tír Fradí for many years, the length of a life. Her black hair was braided in the way of the Yecht Fradí, and she wore an amulet of obsidian that shone like a dark heart at her breast.</p>
<p>If Síora had heard tales of such a creature, she would have known her for a spirit of the island, one of the guardians of her people. But De Sardet had been only a woman, a renaigse for all that she was on ol menawi. How could it be that she had the power of a god? How had the volcano not killed her?</p>
<p>Those thoughts were followed swiftly by another:  De Sardet had never been only a woman.</p>
<p>“She has too much magic,” Síora murmured. Eseld did not turn her eyes from the ceiling, but Síora felt her catch her breath and hold it in her chest for one heartbeat, two, before she sighed like she would push all the air out of their home.</p>
<p>“Magic that is not hers,” she said. “Magic that she stole.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” Síora agreed, quietly.</p>
<p>Then the shouting started outside their door. A dull drumming of fists on the stone got Eseld to her feet. Síora sat up behind her as her sister strode across the floor, muttering, and pushed open the heavy doors. She shielded her eyes with her arm as daylight flooded in, and with it footsteps and angry voices.</p>
<p>“Ullan betrays his people.” That was Aidan. Síora raised her arm to shade her eyes and could just see him striding into their home to pause before the fire and turn back to Eseld. He moved as though he was unhurt.</p>
<p>She had seen him in her dream, and for a moment she thought he was dead—that they both were. She had feared for him. For all his anger and the force behind his words, Aidan was no warrior.</p>
<p>“He trades his loyalty to every invader,” Aidan said. “If he wants to be something other than Yecht Fradí, we should give him what he wants. We should send him into the sea after his people.”</p>
<p>“He gave hospitality to the usurpers,” agreed Oona, one of their young hunters, her face streaked with white paint and dirt. She was little more than a child, eager to risk her life without truly knowing the cost. And Eseld had let her go with them.</p>
<p>Eseld crossed to the back of the roundhouse as they spoke and lowered herself to sit on her mat. When Eseld glanced at her, Síora said, “Ullan is not our enemy.”</p>
<p>“Ullan speaks words of friendship to make us forget the knife in his hand. He sided with De Sardet and the deathbringer against us. He serves them.” Aidan’s voice was proud and scornful. He frowned down at her, and she easily could have believed that she had imagined his sleeping face. His waking face was so different.</p>
<p>She could feel her heart beating hard when she turned to Eseld. “He won’t attack us openly. You know this, a sír. It isn’t Ullan’s way. The Sisaig Cnameis only fought us because we attacked them on their land. If De Sardet…if they are not there, Ullan will not risk war. …And De Sardet does not trust him,” she added, quieter now. “I do not think we will find her with Ullan again. She said they would go to Vigyigidaw.”</p>
<p>“You spoke with her?” Aidan stared at her, and again every face in the room turned toward her.</p>
<p>She wanted to lower her gaze to the dirt at the edge of her mat. She wanted to reach for the comforting solidity of the earth and the power buried within it. But she made herself lift her chin and gaze back at Aidan and say, “I saw her in a dream. She told me Dunncas welcomed them.”</p>
<p>Aidan’s anger choked whatever words he meant to say. He closed his hands into fists until his knuckles were white and turned toward Eseld, who raised a hand to still him.</p>
<p>“What else?” she asked, looking sharp-eyed at Síora. “Síora,” she said when Síora hesitated.</p>
<p>In Tír Anemen, the words that De Sardet had spoken seemed to fall from her mouth as heavy and cold as stones. When Síora repeated them here in the living world, they were like sparks, traveling through the air and setting fire to everyone who heard them. Eseld had to stand and shout to be heard over all of the raised voices. The light from the doorway dimmed and flared and then dimmed again as others crowded in to hear. When finally the room was quiet except for a few murmurs that would not be smothered, Eseld spoke, looking into the faces of each of their allies.</p>
<p>“The usurpers have taken en on mil frichtimen’s power,” she said. “But they are not our gods. They are not Yecht Fradí. This is not their home.” She looked at Síora, and Síora saw in her sister the same fire that had lit their mother’s face after Bladnid had decided to go and fight a battle she could not win. But Eseld had learned from the mistake that had killed their mother. “We will watch them,” she said, her voice hard, “and learn where they are weak. That is where we will strike.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <i>Lily</i>
  </p>
</div><p>The sky over New Sérène was heavy with ash and smog. From the North Road, we could see the bulk of the city wall, but what lay beyond it was shrouded by the haze. We stopped on a hill that overlooked the gate. The ground here had split open, and now a river of black rock, still smoking, crossed a farm field that had been burned to bare soil except for the charred remnants of the farm house and one or two trees. The windmill was a stone husk. Its roof had caught fire and fallen in; the sails lay broken on the ground.</p>
<p>The sun was obscured, and the sky had the same quality that it did in Tír Anemen, at once empty and formless but somehow weighty at the same time.</p>
<p>I was trying to make out what I could of the Coin Guard barracks and the townhouses of the Silver District and did not realize that Constantin had turned away until he spoke. “I remember this view.” He might have spoken in my mind, but he missed—we both missed—the sound of each other’s voice when we spoke too often that way.</p>
<p>He had turned his back to the city and was looking toward the verge of the forest, where it had been pushed back to make room for farm holdings. The trees were still green, underneath a layer of ash; their trunks were whole and unscarred by fire. “I left the city after you left to return to Dorhadgenedu,” he said. “The cart was on this road. We were just passing under the trees, and I felt…” His chest rose as he took a deep breath. He tilted his head back, closed his eyes, and sighed. As I watched him, the air suddenly felt fresh. I could smell green things instead of ash, feel the balmy air coming off the trees instead of the heat radiating from the rocks under our feet. This was Constantin’s memory of that day.</p>
<p>“I felt <i>right,</i>” he said, looking at me. “For the first time.”</p>
<p>All of the things I could have said—I wish I had been there with you, I wish that I could feel the same—seemed too insignificant. So I said nothing but leaned against him and wove my fingers through his. He felt how I was caught between emotions. “You don’t have to say anything, Lily,” he said and leaned toward me until our lips brushed.</p>
<p>I was the one who deepened the kiss. I wanted to be close to him. I wanted to forget the things that I couldn’t speak and couldn’t bear to think of.</p>
<p>He was the one who drew away. “Are you ready?” he asked.</p>
<p>I heard the echo of the words in another voice. <i>Are you ready?</i> Vasco had asked me the same question after the Coin Guard had attempted to take Constantin’s life and his throne.</p>
<p>Had I felt ready for anything that had happened since we’d arrived on the island?</p>
<p>“Yes,” I said, meeting his eyes. Constantin’s lips quirked in a smile. He trailed the backs of his fingers across my cheek.</p>
<p>“I won’t call you out for that.”</p>
<p>I managed something like a laugh. “You just did,” I replied. His smile only grew, but his eyes were still intent on mine. He wasn’t going to let me off that easily.</p>
<p>“I know that sending the colonists back was the right thing to do for the Yecht Fradí,” I said, looking away toward the wall and the lava that had piled up against it and cooled into stone. I could feel the difference in the land here, this close to the city. In Anemhaid, in Vígnámrí and Vedrhais, there seemed to be a current running through the earth, a river that I could not see but that ebbed and flowed and touched everything on the island. Here, the packed, bare earth felt stagnant. This feeling was the symptom of the sickness that the <i>doneigada</i> of Dunncas’s clan were trying to heal in <i>did e kiden nadaigeis</i> and the other Congregation ruins on the island.</p>
<p>“But?” Constantin asked.</p>
<p>“But it came at a high cost. …Perhaps it was too high, Constantin. We killed people when we woke the volcano. And if they escaped the island, they’re risking death by returning home.”</p>
<p>“They brought the malichor on themselves,” Constantin said without pity. “That isn’t our burden to bear. –I know what you feel. New Sérène was my city, after all. But I would burn it all down again for the chance to make something better than it ever could have been.</p>
<p>“See it for what it could be,” he added, when I didn’t respond.</p>
<p><i>Trust me.</i> He didn’t say the words, but I heard them. Again and again, in different ways, he asked me to trust him. I thought I had trusted him, more than anyone. I had come to Tír Fradí for him. I had worked to build his reputation in the eyes of his father and the Congregation. When he’d been taken ill with the malichor, I had spent every bit of the goodwill I’d earned with the islanders to save him.</p>
<p>But that was love. And I was only now beginning to understand that love and trust were not the same, though it was a lesson I should have mastered a long time ago.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>We walked side by side through the gate, through the streets of New Sérène. The city was so still that I could hear the rumbling roar of waves striking the rocks that lined the harbor and the harsh cries and cackles of the gulls. The air was full to choking with the smells of burnt wood and sulfur. And everywhere we passed, shingle roofs had fallen in, sometimes taking brick or stone walls with them, and the scaffolding that had covered the city as if it was a monument waiting to be unveiled lay brittle and blackened in the street, buried under a thick layer of ash.</p>
<p>The lava had come in through the northern gate and emerged in a slow boil from a crack that had appeared in Orsay Square to flood down into the lower districts and pour into the sea. Most of the city had burned. We left our footprints in drifts of ash as we came up through the Silver District and into the square, climbing over the uneven black rock to stand looking up at the governor’s palace. The doors had fallen open—one had fallen off its hinges—revealing a catastrophe of broken wood and marble inside. The fire had burned hot enough that the glass in the windows had shattered and the palace’s stone façade had cracked in places.</p>
<p>Constantin’s eyes traveled over the stone walls. He heaved a sigh and ran a hand through his hair, and then he turned to me, bent toward me wearing a trace of that conspirator’s smile, his face alight. I could feel his spirits tugging at mine, so that I almost flew on the wings of his eagerness.</p>
<p>“Where should we start?”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>He began by taking his knife and pressing it to his palm until his blood ran down in a steady stream. I had never seen him use his magic, and for hours as the air warmed and the gray sky lightened I sat on the stairs leading to the palace and watched him walk around the square, dripping blood with the same care a gardener would take with his watering. He held his other hand up, and I only saw why when he came near enough to me that I could see the tiny particles drifting to him on the air. He would catch one, then let it fall to land on black lava rock or cobblestones that were wet with his blood. And a sapling tree would unfurl. He was calling seeds from the forest.</p>
<p>“I never suspected you to have a passion for gardening, Constantin,” I called to him when the trees had grown taller than his head and grass waved around his knees.</p>
<p>He laughed. Then I heard his voice in my head, close, as if he stood right behind me. <i>Have I caught you out in a failure of imagination?</i></p>
<p>I suppressed the shiver that he wanted to draw from me. <i>You have to admit that gardening is a leap from your usual pursuits,</i> I replied with a little push to let him know that he wouldn’t unsettle me that easily.</p>
<p><i>In another life,</i> he answered. He came to recline beside me on the stairs, leaning back to rest his weight on his elbows and survey his work. His hair had fallen forward over his eyes, and he was so absorbed, eyes narrowed, frowning, that I smiled. He had changed in a way that I almost couldn’t define. But still I recognized this Constantin from the moments I remembered best across all the years we’d been together. This was his private self that perhaps only I knew, without performance, without—</p>
<p>“Say it,” he said aloud, glancing at me, when I hesitated in my thoughts.</p>
<p>“I haven’t seen you drink since…”</p>
<p>“Not since the day of the coup,” he finished for me, not referring to the other news we’d gotten that day. “I haven’t…well, not for medicinal purposes—the purpose of survival—since then.” He shifted to face me. “I agree with you,” he said. “I’m better this way.”</p>
<p>“You found a reason to better yourself.”</p>
<p>He chuckled low in his throat, his lips pulling into a wry smile. “That’s a kind interpretation. You could say that I was terrified out of the habit by a few brushes with death—but saying that I bettered myself makes me sound much more capable than I am. Let’s make that the story.”</p>
<p>“You know I only tell true stories,” I said, and he snorted. But he settled beside me on the stairs, and our fingers brushed against each other. The shadows of broken brick and stone walls lengthened in the square, which was spangled all over with the shimmer of light through green leaves. Moments passed, and we sat and watched and listened to the trees grow taller without saying anything.</p>
<p>Then Constantin broke the quiet, “It isn’t the city I imagined. But I want to see people here, one day… Come”—he stood and offered me his arm—“take a tour with me.”
We were crossing the square—“there could be a market here, or a forum,” Constantin was saying, “a place for all the clans to come together”—when I heard voices. Then we saw them, a group of hunters passing under the arch that led to the eastern gate. They had tied wet cloths over their noses and mouths, but their foreheads and cheeks were painted with ocher pigment and streaks of white. I recognized Derdre by her blonde hair that she wore in knots along her brow.</p>
<p>When I called her name, she stopped and held up her hand for the others to do the same. She said something that was muffled by the cloth over her mouth, but then she raised her hand, palm up, and knelt in one smooth, swift motion to press that palm to the earth. Her people followed. I had to hold tight to Constantin’s arm to keep myself from taking a step back. Derdre was watching me. I could not read the intent behind her eyes.</p>
<p>Still kneeling, Derdre pulled the cloth away from her mouth and said, “<i>Tierna</i>, may the earth quake under your feet.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>The Cengeden Anedas had come to search the city for weapons and anything else useful that had been left behind when the <i>renaigse</i> fled. That night and the next, we camped together on the small plain east of New Sérène. Constantin spent the days walking the streets and alleyways, and it seemed every time I paused and looked up, more of the city was shaded by the crowns of trees and the regular outlines of the buildings were softened by the forest that was taking root.</p>
<p>Derdre and her warriors found the smith’s forge, and I offered what little advice I could as they stoked the forge and tried the hammers and anvil, bending even more out of shape several blades that had been left behind and warped by fire. I had spent hours here when we’d been in the city, questioning Martin, the smith, to learn what improvements I could make to our weapons in the few spare moments I had. I heard his voice in my mind, his eagerness to share the finer points of his trade with me, as I stepped over his charred stool and wiped the ash from the few elegant hunting rifles that had escaped the fire and still rested in their racks on the back wall.</p>
<p>Derdre stood back and watched with narrowed eyes, her hands on her hips. She was determined and clever; soon enough there might be a forge in Vedleug making weapons of iron and steel instead of stone. Part of me—the part that missed hunching over a rifle or vambrace at my work table until my back ached and my vision blurred—wanted to see what they would create. Enough had been left behind by the colonists that Derdre might outfit an army, even if the Yecht Fradí never mined their land themselves. We might need an army if the nations of the continent could gather their resources for another attempt at taking Tír Fradí.</p>
<p>We. I worked with them, surrounded by but not part of their laughter, trying to catch what few words I knew of Yecht Fradí, and felt like the outsider that I was. I heard echoes of Martin working at his shop and the other noises of the city that I had destroyed, the voices on the street, the shouts and hammering of builders, and the rattle of the guard patrolling in their armor.</p>
<p>Derdre had been the one to tell me that I must choose between worlds. And I had—I had chosen Constantin and, with him, the island. But even though I had been born here, I could not truly be Yecht Fradí.</p>
<p>The first night, as the Cengeden Anedas made camp, I found Derdre helping to butcher a buck that the hunters had brought back. Constantin had been waylaid by a tall man who bore the mark of an <i>on ol menawi</i>, whose branches spread out from his head in a wide crown. I had only seen him two or three times before, but I recognized him as Vedleug’s doneigad, Valan. I had only to glance at Constantin’s stiff shoulders and the way he held his hands clasped behind his back to know that Valan unsettled him. Remembering the way his voice rang as he called on the spirit who inhabited their sacred cave and the air carried the blood from the wounds he and the clan’s warriors had given themselves, I wasn’t surprised.</p>
<p>Constantin sensed my thoughts and brushed aside my concern. <i>He’s a grim one, isn’t he?</i> he said. <i>But he seems more than a little fascinated with me. You can stop staring at him like he might pull his knife from his belt.</i></p>
<p><i>There is such a thing as a violent fascination,</i> I replied.</p>
<p>
  <i>We’re safe, Lily. You can stop worrying.</i>
</p>
<p>“<i>Tierna</i>.” I turned when Derdre spoke. She had straightened to look at me and was wiping her hands clean on a scrap of cloth.</p>
<p>“I hoped I might ask you some questions,” I said, gesturing toward the fire that was already burning brightly.</p>
<p>Derdre had been so severe every time we had met that I was surprised when she smiled as she stood to walk with me to the fire. “The game of the <i>renaigse</i>,” she said. Her smile came and went, but traces of it lingered at the corners of her lips as we sat on the far side of the fire where she could watch her people. “But you are one of us now, and there are answers that you need. Ask.”</p>
<p>“I want to understand, Derdre. You told me once, months ago, that I would have to decide between the <i>renaigse</i>, the people who raised me, and my mother’s people. You know the choice I had to make, and I think you know a little of why I chose the way I did.”</p>
<p>She nodded, and I paused to gather the words before I continued, “My mother’s sister told me that you and your <i>doneigad</i> might tell us your stories and your rituals. –There is so much that we don’t understand about the island’s spirits. About ourselves, now.”</p>
<p>If Derdre was actually against us, then I had just exposed our ignorance to her. I felt a sickening lurch in my belly as I waited for her to respond. She sat silent for a moment, studying me.</p>
<p>“Who is your mother’s sister?” she finally asked.</p>
<p>“Slan, the <i>doneigad</i> of the Sisaig Cnameis.”</p>
<p>“Then your mother was Arelwin?” She raised her brows at me, and when I nodded, she abruptly stood. She turned to look down at me. “When the sun goes down, we will tell you our stories.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>The hunters gathered around the fire as last of the light faded from the sky. My senses, my power, had surged when the sun sank below the horizon, and I sat next to Constantin with my hands clenched into fists, trying to keep myself together.</p>
<p>Derdre sat on my other side. And across the fire stood Valan, his face covered by a mask made of bent branches that curved away from his jaw like tusks. The trader from Vígnámrí had told me once that this mask was made to honor the boar spirit. He raised his hand and bowed to salute us before he spoke. “<i>Clos duis a ruicht nes diri,</i>” he chanted, his voice low and resonant, and the others around the fire repeated the words, looking at us. Derdre murmured them next to me. Their voices raised the hair on my arms, on the back of my neck, and without warning, I no longer felt the ground beneath me or the heat of the fire. The night sky seemed as if it was cascading down, drowning everything. I was lost—until Constantin grabbed hold of my hand hard enough that my knuckles rubbed together.</p>
<p>
  <i>Lily?</i>
</p>
<p>I remembered to breathe and found his face in the dark. <i>…I’m here.</i></p>
<p>
  <i>Good. Don’t ask me to interpret what they tell us if you miss it.</i>
</p>
<p>I smiled, shakily, and Constantin put his arm around me, his hand firm on my hip. <i>Stay with me.</i></p>
<p>I looked up to see Valan’s face pointed toward me across the fire and caught the glint of his eyes behind his mask. “We live within nature,” he began in the common tongue. He spoke slowly, but his voice was firm, unwavering, as if he had always spoken the language of the <i>renaigse</i>. He raised both his hands above the fire, his fingers closed around what looked like bunches of leaves. “We are a part of her. She is our mother, who gives life, and it is she who takes it away.</p>
<p>“Tír Fradí gives. Tír Fradí takes back,” he chanted. As the others echoed the words in their own tongue, he opened his hands, and the plants he held fell into the fire to give off a fragrant smoke.</p>
<p>“Our mother has many faces—<i>en on mil frichtimen</i>—the spirits who are of her earth. They are born from her power or are given it in trade, and they live and die as we do.</p>
<p>“Others among the clans have forgotten this,” Valan continued. Beside me, Derdre muttered something under her breath. I glanced over in time to see her nod. “But the Cengeden Anedas remember, we who live shoulder to shoulder with death and draw from it our strength, we who fall and rise again.” A hunter sitting in the shadows across from us raised his arm and whooped and others followed, tilting their heads back and shouting into the night until Derdre finally raised her voice to quiet them.</p>
<p>Valan waited for her nod before he continued. “I tell of the one who called himself <i>en on mil frichtimen</i>, the spirit of Credhenes, who was once a man born of the Vegaig Awelas. In time, he became <i>on ol menawi</i> and the <i>doneigad</i> of his clan. This was long before the people of the sea built their cities and mined our earth, before the first of the guardians appeared to chase away the <i>monisainaiga</i>, in the time when the Cengeden Anedas called Dorhadgenedu our home.” Constantin was listening silently beside me, but I felt him catch his breath at Valan’s words and sit up straighter. I felt the keenness of his concentration in my mind and the urgency he couldn’t give words to, and my throat tightened, my breaths coming shallow as if he held my lungs in his grip. I put my hand over his, and he forced himself to relax, his breath shuddering out of him.</p>
<p>“This was a time of trouble between clans, when the <i>mal</i> of the Vegaig Awelas and Sisaig Cnameis and the <i>mal</i> of other clans whose names have been forgotten saw the lands of their brothers and sisters and wanted them. They thought to call themselves the kings of the sky and the plains. They raided the other clans and killed their warriors and stole their <i>sin ol menawi</i> to sap their power.</p>
<p>“The <i>doneigad</i> of the Vegaig Awelas, the clan of the wind weavers, was clever. His <i>mal</i> had looked upon the heights and Dorhadgenedu but had not been able to defeat our clan.” This time Derdre raised her hand to forestall the shouting that Valan’s words surely would have inspired. Around the fire, young warriors grinned and shoved at each other, throwing surreptitious glances at their <i>mal</i>. “The kings of the plains were stretching their hands across the shores of Tír Fradí,” Valan said, without seeming to notice the disruption. “The days of war born of greed were coming.</p>
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<p>“The other <i>mal</i> knew this to be true. When he proposed another path—the choosing of a high king, to rule over all the clans of the Yecht Fradí—they listened. And each of them thought to be that king. That desire brought them to Dorhadgenedu, the door to the heart of the island, to sit in council and choose.”</p>
<p>Valan paused to throw more herbs on the fire, and the smoke rose up between us. “For many days and nights, the <i>mal</i> argued amongst themselves and could not decide which of them should be the high king—until the <i>doneigad</i> of the Vegaig Awelas told them of a test that might prove which of them was the most worthy to lead, the wisest and the strongest. The trial would be to enter the caves that lie above Dorhadgenedu and face the creatures within. The <i>mal</i> who came out unharmed should be king of all the clans, he said. But, it was decided that the <i>mal</i> of the Cengeden Anedas should not be allowed to undergo the trial. The cave was on our clan’s land, and our <i>mal</i> would know it too well and the creatures who lived there.</p>
<p>“One by one, the <i>mal</i> entered the cave, and one by one they came out clutching their wounds—or did not come out at all. The <i>mal</i> of the Vegaig Awelas was the last to face the trial. As the sun was rising, he came out of the cave, and there was no blood on his body. There was no blood on his sword. Before the sun had set, he was made high king, and the <i>mal</i> of all the clans bowed before him.</p>
<p>“The <i>mal</i> of Cengeden Anedas bowed before him. But that night, she sent her <i>doneigada</i> into the cave to discover how the high king had passed by the Dosantats and Yorglan without shedding blood. When they returned, they told her what they had found:  the earth was torn where a path had been made with roots to trap the Yorglan in their nest and roots that hid the <i>mal</i> from the eyes of the Dosantats. The <i>doneigad</i> had helped his <i>mal</i> pass the trial.</p>
<p>“Our <i>mal</i> stood before all the clans and told what she knew, and the telling opened a fissure in the Yecht Fradí. Some stood with her. Others took up their weapons for the high king. Before peace turned to war, our <i>mal</i> saw that the high king’s <i>doneigad</i> had disappeared. She ordered her warriors to leave her and find him, wherever he had gone.</p>
<p>“They followed the traces of his flight up the mountain and found him in the cave at the top of the world, the heart of the volcano. He was on hands and knees on the rock, and the power he called shook the earth under their feet until they could not stand. Light surrounded him and shone so brightly that they must cover their eyes or be blinded. They felt the heat of it on their faces. And when they could see again, they watched as the <i>doneigad</i> took root on the rocks above them, and his branches stretched to many times the height of a man, and his body became that of a great tree.</p>
<p>“First one of the warriors, then another and another, were caught by the tree’s roots and thrown against the rocks. The last of them ran and saved himself. He brought the story to his <i>mal</i>, and it is this story that the Cengeden Anedas have passed from mother to daughter across more generations than can be counted.</p>
<p>“He who called himself <i>en on mil frichtimen</i> made the crown of the high kings from his flesh. He spoke and gave Dorhadgenedu to the high king and the <i>doneigada</i> who became his guardians, driving out the Cengeden Anedas. For a generation we had no land, until the daughter of our <i>mal</i> led us into Vedleug, where others are afraid to dwell, for she saw how we had fallen and in her wisdom saw that we could make defeat, and death, our strength.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>1. Thanks everyone who's left a comment or kudos so far! I really appreciate the feedback. And thanks especially to the several of you who have sped read through the whole series recently. Unfortunately, your reward is that you're now stuck waiting on me like everyone else!</p>
<p>2. If you've been reading my notes, you'll know I originally was going to tell this story through two POVs, and I decided to get rid of one of them. But, I reserve the right to change my mind and then change it back again. :) There's a scene coming that has to be told from Siora's POV if it's going to play out like the movie I have in my head, so Siora is back. I've also been going back and forth on the idea of writing a second draft of this story, and now that's pretty much a definite, since I need to rewrite/add a few scenes from Siora's POV.</p>
<p>3. The inspiration for the story that Valan tells came from Derdre's dialogue in the game when we're trying to track down the demonic cult. She doesn't refer to en on mil frichtimen but refers to nature as a whole and in the feminine. I don't remember hearing anyone from the other clans saying something similar and, considering how Siora reacts to the Cengeden Anedas's ritual, it made me think that they may have beliefs that are different from the other clans and that en on mil frichtimen might not be the greatest power on the island. The spirit that the Cengeden Anedas call during that ritual is referred to as en on mil frichtimen in the subtitles, even though she's female (or sounds female). It might be because she's a face of the en on mil frichtimen that we know, but it seems to me like "en" might not necessarily be masculine and could be referring to all of the island's spirits and not just the one who calls himself en on mil frichtimen. Anyway, that's just a guess and probably not accurate at all, but it's one of the guesses that I wanted to explore in this story.</p>
<p>4. I referred to Valan as Donegal in a previous chapter before I realized that he already had a name, in case you're wondering where this Valan guy came from.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. The Grave</h2></a>
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    <i>Lily</i>
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  <i>Was he truly human? –You know more of the clans and the island spirits than I do. Do you think they were truthful with us?</i>
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<p>It was late, late enough that even the night creatures were going back under branches and into caves, and we had slipped away from the camp to talk on the bridge that led to the city gate. I leaned against the railing and watched the reflection of the moon on the waters of the harbor, while Constantin paced from one rail to the other, never pausing for more than a breath.</p>
<p><i>I doubt I know more about the spirits than you, Constantin. You hear them in a way, don’t you?</i> He shrugged and nodded, looking out over the water. <i>Derdre misled me once,</i> I continued, <i>But I don’t see what she has to gain by lying to us now. And if the Cengeden Anedas revered</i> en on mil frichtimen <i>why would they create such a story?</i> I had no firm reason for it, but I trusted Derdre, if only because I had crossed her twice and survived and, perhaps, had earned her respect. If she saw us as enemies, she wouldn’t hide it. She would have met us with stone, not hospitality.</p>
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  <i>Then it may be true.</i>
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  <i>It may. Slan seemed to know the story. She told me that I may not understand what we had done when we bound ourselves to the volcano.</i>
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  <i>Are we not gods after all?</i>
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<p>
  <i>Would it matter so much to you if we weren’t?</i>
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<p><i>I don’t know,</i> he answered. <i>No—not if we can stay as we are now. We have power, enough that—</i></p>
<p>He stopped when he saw the look on my face. “You don’t approve,” he said. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked at me, frowning as if he expected me to start lecturing him.</p>
<p>“Constantin, I hardly know what to think.”</p>
<p>“But you have thoughts. –About me. About us.”</p>
<p>“…Only that it’s dangerous to believe you have power, without knowing where it comes from. Only that,” I added, because he would know that I had thought it even if I stayed silent, “I never wanted to rule the island.”</p>
<p>“I know,” he said. “I do, Lily.” He came over to me and took me by my shoulders, and I was surprised when he met my eyes and more so when he smiled. “You’re a damnably decent person—and too clever to ever be happy.” He put two fingers over my mouth to stifle my protest. I glared at him instead. “Don’t call it power. Call it freedom. The only way we can ever be free is to make a place for ourselves.”</p>
<p>“We have made a place for ourselves,” I answered, quietly. “But we need to know what that is.”</p>
<p>A movement behind Constantin caught my eye, and he turned to see what had distracted me. A shadow detached itself from the silhouettes of people sleeping around the fire and came toward us. Derdre raised her hand and bowed slightly as she came onto the bridge.</p>
<p>“Derdre, thank you for sharing your clan’s stories with us,” I said. After Valan told us of <i>en on mil frichtimen</i> others had stood up by the fire to tell us stories of how the storm warriors came by their strength, how they had learned the ways of Vedvilvie so they could make their home at the edges of the swamp, how some of their clan had been among the first guardians to chase away the people who had come from the sea all those generations ago. All the while, Constantin’s thoughts and my own pricked at me until Derdre had signaled that it was enough and sent some to their mats and others to keep watch.</p>
<p>Now Derdre glanced at Constantin before she looked at me. “They are your stories to know.”</p>
<p>“But are they true stories?” Constantin asked. The words had come out of his mouth almost as soon as he’d thought them, before I could caution him against speaking so bluntly.</p>
<p>Derdre studied him, not with hostility as I might have expected, but coolly enough that I felt Constantin steel himself under her scrutiny. He stood up straight and kept his eyes on her face as she looked at him. “Yes, <i>tiern</i>,” she said finally. I had to stop myself from showing my surprise at the respect she accorded him. I may have my roots on the island, but Constantin could only be a <i>renaigse</i> in her eyes. “They are true stories. My mother gave them to me, as her mother gave them to her.”</p>
<p>“Then <i>en on mil frichtimen</i> was once a man?” I asked.</p>
<p>“Yes. As you were.”</p>
<p>I wasn’t sure how to frame my next question, or even what I wanted to ask her. When I glanced at him, Constantin was looking at me, and when I hesitated he said, “How did this happen?</p>
<p>“—I know what I did,” he added. “Though I admit I hardly understand it even now. But how—”</p>
<p>“How were you able to take the place of <i>en on mil frichtimen</i>, when he was powerful, and you were not?”</p>
<p>Constantin tried to hide his grimace. “Yes. Essentially.”</p>
<p>“Tír Fradí gives. Tír Fradí takes back,” Derdre said. Constantin’s frustration at her reply mirrored my own. It was an answer of a sort, but it did nothing to make our situation any clearer.</p>
<p>Again I was surprised when Derdre smiled. I wouldn’t have expected her to answer our question, let alone treat us as if we belonged to her clan. “Tír Fradí gave you the power. The island chose you to defeat the <i>renaigse</i> as <i>en on mil frichtimen</i> did not or could not.”</p>
<p>“Is that what you believe, Derdre?” I asked.</p>
<p>“It is what I know. The volcano woke when you created your bond, and now the <i>renaigse</i> cities have fallen. The <i>renaigse</i> who remain will have to live as the Yecht Fradí do—if they want to live.”</p>
<p>“There are people from the continent still on the island?” I asked.</p>
<p>She nodded. “In Vigsoneigad, the village the Red Suns called Eden. Some have been killed since the clan’s warriors returned, but there are some who are still alive, chasing after their sage.”</p>
<p>I was quiet, thinking of the priests who must be sheltering in Vigsoneigad. How did they feel about their mission to convert the islanders, now that they were the only vestige of their mother country left on Tír Fradí? If their missionaries were as zealous as their brothers and sisters in the Ordo Luminis and as unyielding, they weren’t likely to survive for long.</p>
<p><i>A good club to the head is what most of them need,</i> Constantin said.</p>
<p><i>Constantin—</i> I started, but he was already speaking to Derdre.</p>
<p>“You fought at Dorhadgenedu,” he said. “I felt your footsteps on the mountain. So why support us now?”</p>
<p>She looked at Constantin and raised her empty hands. “I knew you to be a <i>renaigse</i>,” she said. “But because of you”—she looked from Constantin to me—“the <i>renaigse</i> are gone from Tír Fradí. May they never come again.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>The next morning, Constantin and I went down to the Port Quarter so that he could finish the work he’d started in the city. I walked along the shore, past the razed warehouses and half-submerged docks, watching a tide of sea grasses and shrubs flow from the city to the rocks at the water’s edge—until I couldn’t put it off any longer. Constantin looked up when I squared my shoulders and looked back toward the city.</p>
<p>“Are you sure?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Yes.” I didn’t say <i>I have to</i>, but he heard it anyway.</p>
<p>“Don’t stay away long. –Promise me, Lily,” he pressed, when I didn’t reply.</p>
<p>All I could do was nod. I wasn’t sure what I would find when I crossed into Tír Anemen, but I feared it would be a city of ghosts. Ghosts who recognized me and knew what I had done.</p>
<p>But I had to return them to the earth. It was what I could do to help heal this place.</p>
<p>Constantin came to me while I called the border between the lands of the living and the spirits, and just as I could feel the wintery air of Tír Anemen, he took my face in his hands and kissed me. His hands were hot on my skin, his lips were firm, and it was enough to remind me that I was on the side of the living.</p>
<p>He might have said something. He wanted to. But he let me go with only a wordless look shared between us, and I crossed over.</p>
<p>I didn’t look back.</p>
<p>If I had noticed how quiet the city was the day before, the silence of the city in Tír Anemen made me shiver. The ruins were starker with all the color bled from them, and the fires that billowed silently from the tops of gray trees and avenues of grass made it look as though the city was burning still.</p>
<p>But I wasn’t met by a crowd of ghosts. The streets were so silent that I could almost let myself believe that everyone had made it out. I wouldn’t be at peace, though, until I knew it for certain.</p>
<p>I walked up from the harbor, through the Copper District, peering into windows and searching each alleyway, until I heard the first voice, only a mutter, coming from one of the shipping offices. The door was blackened but still stood in its hinges; it was locked from the inside.</p>
<p>I felt like a fool, but I knocked. The sound seemed to hit the air and die instantly. But inside the muttering stopped. A man’s gray head, featuring a prominent hooked nose and a halo of rumpled hair, poked through the door. He squinted, then started when he made me out in the midst of the flames that covered me and immediately disappeared again.</p>
<p>“What in all the far reaches—”</p>
<p>“Sir,” I called.</p>
<p>He fell quiet, but I wasn’t sure how to go on.</p>
<p>“Would you spare me a moment of your time?” I tried, with a grimace. I almost heard Constantin laughing at me in spite of the setting, the spirit of death soliciting door to door, selling the afterlife.</p>
<p>His face appeared at the broken window. “Who—or <i>what</i>--are you?”</p>
<p>I hesitated to answer him. How could I explain what I was to someone who likely had no knowledge of Tír Fradí’s spirits, aside from the stories told in the Coin Tavern and rumors whispered on the streets? Should I use the name he might recognize or one of my others?</p>
<p>“Ciotach,” I said finally. “A friend.”</p>
<p>He looked me up and down. “A friend,” he scoffed. “You’re a native. –Why are you here? If you’ve come to loot, know that—”</p>
<p>“I’m not here to steal from you.” Before I could tamp down my irritation, the fire around me flared, and the man took a hasty step away from the window. He brought a hand up to cover his mouth. But in the next moment he seemed to forget me completely. I watched his expression turn vague and distracted. He turned and paced away, muttering to himself.</p>
<p>“It will pass…” he said. “They are scared rabbits to flee.”</p>
<p>He thought the eruption was still happening, that he was still alive.</p>
<p>“Why are you staying?” I asked.</p>
<p>He looked up and seemed to remember me. “Oh—” he said and clucked his tongue, scowling at me. “You can have no concept—how many years it took us to gain a foothold on this island… My brother would be furious if he knew I had abandoned it all in the face of a little fire.”</p>
<p>I had known that there would be some who would not abandon their property and interests on the island. That would have been the case whether Constantin and I had woken the volcano or Derdre had swept out of the forest with an army of Yecht Fradí and <i>Nádaig</i>. But still, I didn’t expect the wave of pity and anger and guilt I felt looking at this man as he paced behind the window and clenched and unclenched his hands.</p>
<p>If I laid the choice before him, would he choose to leave now and go back to the earth? I doubted it.</p>
<p>I came close to the window and held my hand out to him, and he stopped and stared at the flame wavering in my palm.</p>
<p>“What’s this?”</p>
<p>“I must leave you,” I said. “Take my hand, and let me wish you well.”</p>
<p>He looked at me with suspicion, but then he sighed and said, “Fine, fine, be on your…” Before he could finish, he had put his hand in mine, the gesture completely disinterested, until something passed through him and his eyes widened. I felt the welling up of my power. And then he was gone, in the middle of a thought, back to the soul of all things.</p>
<p>There were others. Not many, but I counted each one and felt the weight of lives lost. Most were younger men and as confused as the first man was. More than once I used the excuse of social courtesy to deceive them into taking my hand and touching the flame, and I wasn’t sorry for it. They could not be at peace as they were, and once they were in the soul of all things they would have the chance to live again as part of all the living things on Tír Fradí.</p>
<p>I found two children who had died with their father as they were trying to flee along the eastern wall down to the harbor. In a way, they were better than the others, easier—but facing them and adding their deaths to my count was also much worse. They had a clear-eyed understanding of what had happened, as the adults, even their father, did not. They knew I wasn’t human but that I fit in the place in which they found themselves.</p>
<p>“Where are you taking us?” the older child, a girl, asked, putting her arm in front of her younger brother, who clutched her skirts.</p>
<p>“Away from here,” I said. She raised her chin, trying to be brave, so I didn’t kneel or lie to her as adults did to children. “To Tír Fradí.”</p>
<p>“Will we be safe there? What is it like?”</p>
<p>“Yes, you and your brother and father will be safe, I promise it. You’ll be a part of everything on the island, and you’ll have nothing to fear.”</p>
<p>She gave me a searching look and then bit her lip and nodded, looking down at her brother. “Come on, Bastien,” she said. His hand in hers, she reached for the flame. I felt their touch as the barest brush of a chill on my skin.</p>
<p>Their father’s eyes were wide when I turned to him. “What are you?” he asked.</p>
<p>The words came easier this time. “Ciotach,” I said. “I am…the spirit of this place.” I wondered how long it would be before saying the words did not make my heart pound in my chest. “Your children are waiting for you.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>By the time I had walked through most of the city, I was worn raw. My throat burned, and twice I’d had to stop and press the heels of my hands to my eyes and take deep, ragged breaths to stop the tears from coming. There isn’t much more, I told myself; it could have been so much worse.</p>
<p>The Coin Guard barracks had been mostly deserted since the attempted coup. The guardsmen Constantin had to send for from Sérène had taken it over, but their numbers were fewer. They would have been called to duty when the city was evacuated, so I wasn’t expecting to find any still at the barracks. That was why the voices I heard in the alley between the barracks and the wall startled me so badly.</p>
<p>“Faster—or you’ll be on your ass with a dent in your skull!”</p>
<p>I heard the shout as if from a great distance and stumbled, shedding fire as I whirled around to see who had spoken. There was no one there. The alley was empty. But then I heard the ring of steel on steel, panting, a muffled grunt. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw someone move.</p>
<p>As if my noticing had called them into being, they suddenly appeared around me:  a company of Coin Guard soldiers in their brigandines, sparring in pairs.</p>
<p>It didn’t take long—one of them noticed me and broke away from her partner with a shout, and then the rest of them were stumbling backward away from me, a few of them dropping their weapons in their haste.</p>
<p>“Soldiers!”</p>
<p>I recognized the voice that made the guards around me stop in their tracks and straighten their spines. And hearing it sent a chill through me. I didn’t want to see this, to see him. I didn’t want to recognize the faces of the men and women that stood back against the walls around me. But I turned to face Kurt as he pushed his way through their ranks and stopped in front of me. His face and jaw were whole and unharmed, the face I had seen nearly every day for almost half my life.</p>
<p>He stared at me, and the muscles in his cheeks stood out as he clenched his jaw. He reached up to put one hand on the hilt of his great sword, but he didn’t draw it.</p>
<p>“Do you talk?” he muttered, almost as if he was wondering aloud to himself.</p>
<p>Could I? I had to clear my throat before I could say, “Yes.”</p>
<p>He looked at me again. He lowered his arm slowly, as if he’d forgotten he had an arm. “Green Blood?”</p>
<p>I nodded.</p>
<p>I saw his mouth working, but he said nothing. His eyes were fixed on my face, the branches that crowned my head, the flickering flames on my shoulders.</p>
<p>Around us, his soldiers murmured to each other.</p>
<p>“The legate.”</p>
<p>“What does she want with us?”</p>
<p>“Is she dead? …We’re dead, aren’t we? I remember…”</p>
<p>“I remember her.”</p>
<p>I stiffened as Kurt growled, “Quiet.” Then, when the whispering continued, he turned to glare at them. “I said shut it!” Even Kurt’s barking voice was muffled in Tír Anemen.</p>
<p>He looked at the gray faces around him, the wall, the hard-packed dirt of the alleyway—everywhere but at me. When he finally turned back to me, he wore an expression that I had never seen on his face before. “Are you dead?” he asked.</p>
<p>“No, I’m well.</p>
<p>Kurt—” I started, not sure how I meant to go on, but he spoke before I could find the words.</p>
<p>“Good,” he said. “Good.” He pulled his shoulders back and set one foot next to the other, and he pointed his eyes off into the middle distance the way I’d only seen him do when he was reporting to my uncle—and one other time. “Coin Guard,” he boomed, “attention!”</p>
<p>They must have questioned the order, but in the end they were too well trained—proud men and women of the Guard—to do anything but fall in line behind him. In a moment, I stood before orderly rows of guards, all of them silent and at attention, none of them meeting my eyes.</p>
<p>“My lady,” said Kurt.</p>
<p>I felt as though every word I’d ever known had left me. I hadn’t expected to see Kurt again—or even to visit his grave—and I hadn’t considered what I would say to him, if the impossible became possible and I had the chance. With my thoughts a horrible blank, I looked more closely at the alleyway. There was a place along a stretch of the wall where the ground was raised an inch or two higher than the ground around it, though it was as trampled as the rest of the alley. A trench had been dug there. A grave. This was where they had been buried.</p>
<p>The outline of the trench reminded me why I was here. “This is Tír Anemen,” I told them, falling back on the habits of a lifetime spent at court, that let me put enough distance between myself and them to say what needed to be said. “The land of spirits. No one is meant to stay here, like this. The Yecht Fradí give their dead to the earth to free them from Tír Anemen and return them to the soul of all things.</p>
<p>“I can do that for you,” I said, more quietly now, trying to meet the eyes of the few who glanced cautiously at me. “If you take my hand, you can leave this place.”</p>
<p>A ripple of surprise passed through their ranks, but even in death, they wouldn’t move without the order.</p>
<p>Kurt was looking at me when I turned to him, and our eyes met. He studied me for a moment more, frowning, before he turned to address the soldiers behind him. “Any of you who want to be free of this cursed place have your officer’s permission. You’ve given your life to the Guard. You’ve taken your blows for not enough coin and even less glory—time to get what good you can out of it. As for me,” he continued, and his hands closed into fists, “…as for me, I’ll stay on to take my orders from the lady.”</p>
<p>“Kurt!” He turned to face me. “Kurt, I’m not asking you to do this.”</p>
<p>“Didn’t say you were, my lady.”</p>
<p>His stubbornness, his “my lady”s broke what little control I’d been able to muster, and I took a step toward him, raising my hands as if I could grab him by the arms and make him see sense. “I don’t want you to stay here!”</p>
<p>“And I don’t want to go out like this.”</p>
<p>I couldn’t argue with him. And as soon as he’d said the words, I sensed the others set their minds to follow them as well. The few I might have convinced were determined to stay now and take their orders from me, for reasons I couldn’t fathom.</p>
<p>I caught myself before I shouted at him. “If that’s your decision,” I said, my throat tight. He nodded. “…I hope you’ll have changed your minds when I come back.”</p>
<p>I was halfway back to the harbor when I heard Kurt’s voice behind my right shoulder.</p>
<p>“Green Blood.”</p>
<p>I kept walking and felt the cold where his hand passed through my arm.</p>
<p>“Give me a moment. –I know I don’t have the right to ask it of you.”</p>
<p>That stopped me. Seeing Kurt, hearing his voice, was enough to swamp me with guilt and anger and grief. We were the two last people in the world who could say anything to each other about right and wrong.</p>
<p>I had to search to find his face in the gloom beneath the trees that lined the Copper District. The ground was still bare here, and the light that I cast off seemed only to go through Kurt and obscure his shape. When I found his eyes, shadowed by his drawn brow, I found I couldn’t meet them. I looked away, down the street toward the harbor.</p>
<p>“What is it, Kurt?”</p>
<p>The distance in my tone made him hesitate, and he shifted on his feet. But he was still enough himself to ask the question anyway. “What happened?”</p>
<p>I shook my head and almost laughed. I hadn’t imagined telling the story to anyone, least of all him.</p>
<p>“That dire?”</p>
<p>“In many ways, yes.”</p>
<p>“Will you tell me?” he asked, haltingly. “I know I…I’ve been the worst kind of fool. I betrayed your trust. But believe me when I say I never wanted to see you hurt.”</p>
<p>But he had. “You did hurt me,” I murmured. “You hurt us both.”</p>
<p>As if my thoughts had called him, Constantin appeared under the arch at the end of the street. He walked toward us, peering into the alleyways he passed and occasionally putting a hand on a tree that jumped at his touch.</p>
<p>“Is that Constantin?” Kurt asked. When I nodded, he said, “He’s looking for you.”</p>
<p>Before Constantin reached us, I turned back to Kurt. “I’m sorry,” I said, “that I didn’t listen to you when you wanted to investigate the Guard. …I don’t know if that would have made a difference.” I wanted to believe that Kurt hadn’t been one of the conspirators in the Guard early on, when we’d first arrived on the island. If he had, would he have brought me into his confidence after we’d discovered how Reiner died?</p>
<p>Kurt cleared his throat but said nothing.</p>
<p>“I’ll come back,” I said. I held up my hand with its flame and watched his eyes fix on it, watched him frown. “I hope you’ll reconsider. You should be able to rest, Kurt.”
Before he could argue, I called the living world to me and slipped across the border to meet Constantin’s smile and his startled laugh on the other side. When he saw my face, he sobered and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me against him.</p>
<p>“You’re always so cold,” he said, his breath warm, almost hot, on my cheek. “…Was it bad?”</p>
<p>I hesitated. I couldn’t tell Constantin about Kurt. We had never spoken of him after the day he’d died, not with everything that had happened after. But how could I keep the encounter from him when he knew my thoughts as easily as his own?</p>
<p>It was easier than I had imagined, once I had a thought I wanted to protect—I kept it close and quiet and felt the distance grow between Constantin’s mind and mine.
Constantin felt it, too. He held me away from him so he could look at me. “Lily?”</p>
<p>“It was bad enough,” I said, trying to smile to put him at ease. “But it’s done. –Can we go, Constantin? I’d rather not stay here.”</p>
<p>His eyes studied mine—was he trying to reach me with his thoughts?—but then he smiled and rubbed his hands over my arms. “Then we’ll go.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Raise your hand if you saw ghost!Kurt coming. :)</p>
<p>ghost!Kurt was a late addition to the story. I think I re-read "The Dark Hours" at some point and remembered my glitchy encounter with Kurt at the Coin Guard Arena after I'd killed him (I was channeling Daenerys Targaryen that day--he's lucky I didn't have a dragon). I had always been planning for Constantin and Lily to go back to New Serene, and once I remembered ghost!Kurt, he just had to happen.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Eden</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <i>Lily</i>
  </p>
</div><p>A wedge of sunlight fell across the floor as Ler, Vigsoneigad’s <i>mal</i>, pulled open the door of the chapel. Despite their situation as refugees, <i>renaigse</i> separated from their people and dependent on Ler’s mercy—on Derdre’s mercy—the missionaries had kept the chapel tidy, and the wooden boards gleamed with polish. We stepped inside. The rest of the sanctuary had been just as well cared for. The wooden walls reflected the warm glow from the many lamps; small prayer benches had been placed at regular intervals on the floor atop red rugs. The carving of Saint Matheus on the far wall, a more modest replica of the great stone statue that stood in the courtyard outside, presided over a space that was quiet, ordered. Nothing was out of place. Nothing had shaken this world.</p>
<p>I hadn’t expected what we’d found in Eden. We’d arrived as the sun was lowering and the shadows were growing long and walked through a strange union of the old world and the new, barns and cottages and store rooms with peaked roofs, their wooden walls still unweathered, constructed around and in between the islanders’ stone roundhouses that were covered in moss and looked as though they’d grown out of the landscape. I’d heard mentions of Eden, but I had never seen it with my own eyes. So many questions came to my mind, one jostled aside by the next, as we followed Derdre and her warriors to the home of the <i>mal</i> that Constantin turned away from the village and watched me instead, fighting to hide his smile.</p>
<p>Ler, his face hidden behind a mask that honored the deer spirit, welcomed us to Vigsoneigad and into his home. At first, I thought he accepted us because we were in Derdre’s company. But the few hours that we spent with him taught me that he was a man like Dunncas or Catasach—patient and temperate, unwilling to act without first watching and listening. There were so many men of that sort among the Yecht Fradí and so few among all the people I had known on the continent. Sir de Courcillon had been one. The others, like Petrus, may have seemed above self-interest, but in reality, more often than not, they were simply better at the game of politics.</p>
<p>“Was there a battle here?” I asked Ler, after we had shared greetings and sat beside his small fire. “I couldn’t see any signs of one.” The village had been quiet. It was true that most of the people we had seen had been Yecht Fradí, but none of the buildings had been burned or torn down.</p>
<p>“Oh, yes,” Ler said. “Our warriors returned when the volcano woke and the Saul Lasser returned to the sea. Many fought, and many died.”</p>
<p>“Many <i>renaigse</i>,” Derdre said, and Ler bowed his head to her.</p>
<p>“Most of the <i>renaigse</i> who called themselves our neighbors,” he echoed. “Almost two moons have passed since that time.”</p>
<p>“But you continue to allow them to live here? Eden is still standing.”</p>
<p>“They live and must live somewhere. One day their houses will return to the earth and one day, perhaps, there will be no Saul Lasser and Yecht Fradí, only the people of Vigsoneigad—one people out of two faces.” The last he seemed to say almost to himself. Behind his mask, his eyes turned away from me to look into the fire.</p>
<p>Before the hour grew too late, Ler agreed to take us to the heart of Eden to meet the former leader of the settlement, Father Iustinius.</p>
<p><i>I know you dislike priests as much as I do,</i> Constantin said in my thoughts as we left Ler’s home. <i>Why do you want to speak to them? We know they’re alive and safe enough, if they don’t test Derdre’s patience—which, admittedly, may be in short supply. They’ll care less about your kindness than about casting judgement on us if they know what we’ve become.</i></p>
<p>He wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t expecting this to be a pleasant encounter; my dealings with Thélème rarely had been, when they’d progressed beyond the most superficial small talk. Petrus had been the exception. I had thought he wanted to cultivate me as a political ally—or a pawn, more like—but it had been his love for my mother that had spurred his interest in me when we’d met on the island and years earlier when I had been only a child. Would Petrus have wanted me to come to Eden like this? He had cared about his country and his people, I was sure of that much, even when it seemed as though his schemes and his station had been his chief concerns.</p>
<p>I needed to know that the missionaries could live peacefully here in Vigsoneigad, as part of the village. Perhaps it was for Petrus, perhaps it was for Derdre and Ler and their kin—either way, I might be able to do my part to make the idea of Eden reality, though it would be called Vigsoneigad.</p>
<p>But if they knew what we were, what would they do?</p>
<p><i>This isn’t a secret we can keep,</i> I said as we followed Ler and Derdre up a steep walkway, leaving the roundhouses of Vigsoneigad behind for a small courtyard covered in paving stones and Eden’s imposing stone chapel.</p>
<p>
  <i>No, they’ll find out eventually, if they don’t already know.</i>
</p>
<p>And what will we do?</p>
<p>The question was unspoken between us, hovering at the edges of our thoughts. Constantin felt my hesitation, and I felt him decide not to ask, not to press me.</p>
<p>Ler opened the door, and we walked into the chapel.</p>
<p>Once my eyes had adjusted to the dim light, I saw several people kneeling on the prayer benches that faced the carving of the saint the low altar below it. They did not look up as we came in and Ler pulled closed the door behind us, but a moment later, a man appeared from an open door at the back of the sanctuary, settling his brimmed hat over his head. He cast a glance at Derdre and wet his lips nervously before he turned to Ler.</p>
<p>“<i>Mal</i>,” he said, bowing his head to Ler. “What brings you to our door this evening?”</p>
<p>Only then did he seem to see us.</p>
<p>“The <i>tierna</i> have a desire to speak with you, Father Iustinius,” Ler said, as the father tried to hide his start of surprise.</p>
<p>“Father,” I said, slipping between Ler and Derdre to offer him my hand. He hesitated before he accepted it, watching me, bemused.</p>
<p>“You are from the continent. …From the Congregation?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” I replied.</p>
<p>“Then there are people from the continent still on the island? Or has a ship returned? –But why,” he added, catching himself and letting go of my hand. His eyes took me in, from the branches that spread in a crown from my head to the clothes I wore. Or rather, the clothes I assumed I wore; I couldn’t tell what he saw, only that he couldn’t see the ghost fire that rippled over my skin. If he could, I doubted we would still be standing together in the same room. “—Forgive me,” he said, stumbling over the words, “your appearance is…”</p>
<p>“Extraordinary?” Constantin offered. He stepped forward to stand beside Derdre. “Astonishing? …Or perhaps just unexpected?”</p>
<p>Constantin had a gift for making me want to smile and sigh at the same time. <i>We could try to start on more friendly terms,</i> I said to him.</p>
<p>
  <i>I am smiling, am I not?</i>
</p>
<p>I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes at him.</p>
<p>“Shall we talk in a more comfortable setting?” Constantin continued, gesturing toward the back of the sanctuary and the door Father Iustinius had emerged from. This time he made an effort to sound more amiable.</p>
<p>Father Iustinius seemed to gather himself. “Yes,” he said, “Of course.”</p>
<p>I saw out of the corner of my eye one or two of the worshippers raise their heads as we passed. We walked through into the room adjoining the chapel, and Father Iustinius shut the door behind us. It was a small office, sparsely furnished with a desk and several chairs. A low bench stood against one wall, and a small tapestry depicting the lamp and flame that were the symbols of the Enlightened hung above the desk. Father Iustinius was frowning as he settled himself into his chair at the desk and gestured for us to sit.</p>
<p>Ler lowered himself to sit on the bench, his knees jutting up almost to his chest. He placed his hands on the bench, then folded them in his lap. He looked as though he’d be more comfortable sitting on the floor. Derdre surveyed the small room, then went to lean against the wall near Ler, her arms crossed over her chest. Constantin and I took the two chairs in front of the desk. Constantin leaned against one of the arms, but he was already tapping one heel on the floor.</p>
<p>I waited for the priest to speak. He busied himself arranging the objects on his desk, closing the book he had been reading and setting it aside and straightening a thin stack of paper, the topmost sheet nearly covered with rows of cramped but neat notes. He placed his quill beside the stack and his inkpot at the top left corner and then looked up at me, studying my face. “I’m afraid I haven’t had the honor of your name,” he said.</p>
<p>“De Sardet,” I answered at once. “And may I introduce Constantin d‘Orsay.” I gestured toward Constantin, who nodded and straightened his back slightly.</p>
<p><i>How many truths are you thinking to tell?</i> Constantin asked me.</p>
<p>
  <i>Just enough.</i>
</p>
<p>“The governor of New Sérène…” Father Iustinius said. He glanced once more at the crown of branches atop Constantin’s head and the mark of his bond that spread across his cheek and throat before turning to me. “And you are the Congregation’s legate on the island, am I correct?”</p>
<p>“Former on both counts, Father,” I replied. Now we would see how much news had reached Eden in the days leading up to the battle at Dorhadgenedu and the ritual that had bound us to the volcano.</p>
<p>Father Iustinius blew out a breath, leaning back in his chair. “I confess I am astonished,” he said after a long moment. “I cannot imagine why you have come here.” <i>Looking as you do.</i> He did not say them, but the words were implied. “Why haven’t you returned to the continent?”</p>
<p><i>He doesn’t know,</i> Constantin said.</p>
<p>I was fairly certain that Constantin was right. I had approached the Mother Cardinal for help when I had thought that my only course was to face Constantin and put an end to his madness, and I had been given only her regrets and a ring. Petrus had worn it into battle and died with it on his hand. With the Ordo Luminis gone into hiding in San Matheus or fled to Eden, the Mother Cardinal could not offer any other help. My plea would have gone no farther than the sitting room at Thélème’s embassy on Orsay Square.</p>
<p>I was also fairly certain that none of the priests in Eden were fluent in Yecht Fradí. Their work would have been to convert the islanders to the worship of the Englightened and the ways of the continent, not to learn the ways of the people they’d come to live among. They wouldn’t have heard the stories passed among the villagers of the death of <i>en on mil frichtimen</i> and the birth of new gods.</p>
<p>We couldn’t keep the knowledge from them indefinitely if they remained on the island, but now, at least, we might have a conversation that wasn’t tainted by fear or charges of heresy.</p>
<p>“You must have heard rumors of my appearance, Father,” I began, touching the rough, bark-like skin on my cheek. Father Iustinius’s eyes followed my hand. He nodded.</p>
<p>“It was rumored that you had a most singular birthmark,” he said, “or so it was considered on the continent. …We heard after your arrival that your face was very like the faces of the natives.”</p>
<p>“Indeed. And you can see for yourself that those rumors were true. …Perhaps you will be less surprised than I was to learn that Tír Fradí is my homeland. My parents were Yecht Fradí. Before the Nauts sold the island’s location to Thélème and the Bridge, the Congregation was the only nation on the continent which knew of Tír Fradí’s existence. My mother was captured during one of the Congregation’s expeditions to the island. She gave birth to me aboard the ship during the voyage back.”</p>
<p>The look he gave me then was quietly assessing. I had all but admitted that I had been raised to be something more than the merchant prince’s niece, that my presence on the island was a more strategic move than anyone without the knowledge of my heritage might have guessed. Beside me, Constantin shifted in his chair, silently bristling. He put his hand over mine, weaving our fingers together.</p>
<p>“You chose to remain here,” Father Iustinius said.</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>He turned to Constantin. “And did you choose to remain as well, your highness?”</p>
<p>“I did,” Constantin answered. I thought he would leave it at that. He paused, but then he continued in a sharp exhale. “For the woman I love,” he said. He looked at me, and his fingers closed tight around my hand. “For both of us. We’ve learned many truths on the island, Father. There’s no going back. Tír Fradí was a dream we shared almost since we first learned its name, and now it’s our only home.”</p>
<p>It was the first time he had declared his feelings for me in front of someone from the continent, in front of anyone. And though I had worked for years to discover and master all of my tells, I felt my cheeks flush with heat and a shiver of pleasure course through me at his words.</p>
<p><i>I will never tire of that,</i> Constantin said in my thoughts. <i>I hope I always have that effect on you.</i></p>
<p>My thoughts had come undone, but scattered among them was the vague notion that Constantin might have to try harder to unsettle me if he was too free with words of love.</p>
<p>I sensed him smiling inwardly. <i>Is that a challenge?</i> He sent me a memory—his hands on me, traveling up from my hips to my waist, making the flames flicker, before they closed hot around my ribs. I had to take a breath to steady myself.</p>
<p>Behind us, Ler asked Derdre a question in Yecht Fradí, his voice pitched low. Derdre answered, and Ler gave a low rumble of assent. When I looked at Father Iustinius, he was frowning again. He looked down and away from us, as if he was considering a problem that wasn’t in this room.</p>
<p>“I can imagine the betrayal of your family was a shock, my child,” he said finally. When he looked up at me, his face was more relaxed; the lines on his brow and at the corners of his mouth had disappeared. He believed us, then. We had given him enough truths to tell a full story:  I had been betrayed by a family and a country that weren’t truly mine, and Constantin had given up everything to stay with me out of a love that we weren’t free to act upon on the continent. It seemed to satisfy him. Perhaps he pitied us. Perhaps he congratulated himself on finding defectors who might become his country’s pawns in the future.</p>
<p>Whatever his reasons, for the moment it was enough that he asked us no more probing questions. “I’m afraid I have little help to offer,” he said, spreading his hands. He carefully avoided looking at Derdre and Ler where they waited at the back of the room, as he had since we’d seated ourselves. “But please, tell me what brings you here.”</p>
<p>“We haven’t come to seek help, Father,” I said, “but to offer it, if there’s a need. We heard that you had been stranded and heard of some of the troubles of the village. We wanted to see for ourselves if all was well.” I twisted in my chair to look over my shoulder at the <i>mal</i>. “Ler, Derdre, I don’t mean to exclude you. This includes your clans as much as the settlers.”</p>
<p>I felt the urge kindle to life in Constantin’s mind just before he spoke, but still his words caught me off-guard. “This is a…remarkable experiment, truly. I don’t mean your missionary work, Father, but the work of this moment. <i>Now</i>. You have the chance to create something that has never been before on the island, one people out of two races.”</p>
<p>The priest’s face paled under his gray felt hat, and I caught my breath. It was Ler who saved us, speaking from the back of the room. “That has been our hope, that we might learn from our neighbors and live together in peace. We carry that hope still.”</p>
<p>Father Iustinius cleared his throat, but when he answered Ler, there was a warmth behind his words that surprised me. “As do we, <i>mal</i>.”</p>
<p>“Will you tell us what has happened to your missionaries? What kept you here?”</p>
<p>Now Father Iustinius glanced past me, and Derdre spoke. “Answer, mind shaker. I do not fear your words.”</p>
<p>Father Iustinius caught his breath, then sighed. “You called this a remarkable experiment,” he said, looking at Constantin. “That was our intent when we arrived here, following the footsteps of Saint Matheus. But truthfully it has not been an easy path to follow.” He told us then how Eden had sprung up almost overnight, the walls and roofs of cottages and barns hoisted up to stand next to the islanders’ roundhouses. The growth of the village came out of the same inner fire that gave urgency to the missionaries’ search for relics from the saint’s time on the island.</p>
<p>It hadn’t been long before they’d found the tablets that Saint Matheus had left with the village. Many of Vigsoneigad’s warriors and the village’s <i>doneigad</i> had been violent and unwilling to listen to the teachings of the Enlightened; regrettably, they had left Vigsoneigad for Vedleug, or so he had heard. But Ler had seen the truth of their teachings and had led them to the tablets.</p>
<p>I could guess the events that had followed. Derdre’s raid hadn’t been the first confrontation between the Cengeden Anedas and Eden.</p>
<p>“The tablets were…a significant discovery. Sister Eugenia, our head scholar, impressed upon me at the time how much they reveal of the saint’s last years of life, how much we have to learn from them,” he continued. But the research had been plagued by trouble from the start. Soon after they’d been discovered, the tablets had been stolen from the building in which they’d been stored, which had been guarded day and night. It had been evident that the islanders who had left the village were responsible for the theft. Father Iustinius sent word to the Mother Cardinal to ask for more support, and shortly after, the Ordo Luminis had dispatched men to Eden to bolster their guards. But despite all their efforts, they were unable to recover the tablets.</p>
<p>“You do not tell of how your people punished Vigsoneigad,” Derdre said.</p>
<p>“Punishment is hardly the word,” Father Iustinius protested. “—And what choice did we have? Our very presence here was threatened, and we did not know from what direction the threat came.”</p>
<p>“You were afraid,” Derdre said, stalking across the room until she stood beside Constantin, looming over the priest’s desk. “The people suffered for your fear—suffered your questions, beatings, your laws that kept them huddled under roofs at night.”</p>
<p>“Derdre, please,” I broke in, and Derdre relented, taking a step back though she cast Father Iustinius a black look. “Was it like this until the volcano erupted?” I asked her.</p>
<p>“Yes. Until we came.”</p>
<p>When I looked at him, Father Iustinius jerked his head in a nod. “All of our soldiers were killed in that attack. All of the Ordo Luminis.”</p>
<p>“Did you try to return to San Matheus?” I asked.</p>
<p>Father Iustinius removed his hat and passed a hand through his graying hair. “We were divided. Some argued that we should flee. Sister Eugenia and a few of her scholars refused to leave. I might have saved us all, but I did not recognize the true danger until it was too late. All the ships had gone. You must understand,” he added, “we felt the earth move, but all was quiet after. The smoke on the horizon did not tell us the full tale.”</p>
<p>“How many of you are there? We didn’t see many missionaries in the village.”</p>
<p>“No, you wouldn’t have. Several days ago, Eugenia took a large party and left for the swamps to the north. There were mentions in the tablets of an abode in Védvílvie, where the saint went to pray and commune with the Enlightened. She is convinced that we will make new discoveries there.”</p>
<p>“If they live,” Derdre said. “Védvílvie does not like to return what is given to him.”</p>
<p>Father Iustinius gripped the arms of his chair, and I was close enough to see how his knuckles whitened. He feared for her.</p>
<p>Next to me, Constantin sighed, and when I turned to him, he was already looking at me sidelong, his chin propped in one hand. “Shall we go look for her?” he asked me, one corner of his lips pulled up in a smile.</p>
<p>“She is on an interesting trail…”</p>
<p>“That’s a yes, then.” Constantin nearly bounded out of his chair. “Father. We’ll take our leave. You will have your Eugenia back soon.”</p>
<p>I pushed Constantin toward the door while the priest sputtered, his pale cheeks reddening. “We’ll help her if we can,” I said, “and see her safely back to the village. Rest easy, Father.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>Derdre and her warriors accompanied us the next morning, when we left the gates of Eden and followed the path north. The forest around the village had been cleared of trees by the settlers, and we passed through a field of shorn stumps and thick grass before we reached trees that were still standing. Constantin looked behind at the ground we had covered, and I knew he had decided to come back, to bring the forest back.</p>
<p>“There is one thing I don’t understand,” I said to Constantin, as we descended a hill and I sensed the first signs of the swamp in the way the earth turned loamy and damp under my bare feet.</p>
<p>“What is that?”</p>
<p>“Father Iustinius said that the tablets had been stolen. How did Eugenia learn of Saint Matheus’s retreat in the swamps?”</p>
<p>“She came to me,” Derdre said behind me. Her warriors ranged ahead and to either side of us, while she had walked close by for the entire journey. “She came to Vedleug and asked to have the tablets to read.”</p>
<p>“You had them?” I asked, pausing so we could walk side by side.</p>
<p>“They were given to us to protect, yes.”</p>
<p>“You trusted the priests enough to return them?” Constantin asked.</p>
<p>At that, Derdre barked a laugh. “No, <i>tiern</i>. I know too much of the mind shakers to trust. We returned the old sage’s writing to Vigsoneigad. The Saul Lasser may read it when the <i>doneigad</i> says, but they may not take the stones.”</p>
<p>“Eugenia was brave to approach you.”</p>
<p>She gave me a considering look and nodded. “Her spirit is kin to yours,” she said. “She masters her fear.”</p>
<p>We walked all of that morning and into the afternoon, descending from the forested hills to wet meadows shaded in places by huge, old trees, their branches hung with moss. The lower places were covered with shallow, reedy pools, and from all around us came the creaking calls of frogs and the whistling choruses of insects that hushed when we came near. I had been here before, when Derdre had sent me into the swamp to be killed by a guardian. I hadn’t wanted to spend one minute more than necessary in this place, then.</p>
<p>Now I shivered in the balmy air. There was so much here, so much life and death, welling up as if from a bottomless fountain. I felt those currents against my skin, on my tongue, in my chest.</p>
<p><i>This is a place of power,</i> Constantin said. He felt it as I did. I could feel his heart pounding, and I was amazed that he was still walking beside me, still in his skin. When he grabbed my hand, I felt how much effort it took him.</p>
<p>The feeling, almost overwhelming, stayed with us until we found the camp deep in Védvílvie, huddled on a relatively dry outcropping of rock.</p>
<p>“Have they abandoned it?” Constantin asked as we walked along the wooden barricade the priests had built. We could hear no voices, only a scrabbling sound as some creature fled through the undergrowth at our approach. A wisp of smoke rose from somewhere within the camp. There was a fire lit, but dying, by the looks of it.</p>
<p>We gathered at the gap in the barricade, Derdre’s warriors crowding behind their <i>mal</i> or leaning against the wall, and were greeted by the sight of three people kneeling by a small fire in prayer. They looked up, two of them gaping at us; the third, a young man, stood to face us with clenched fists.</p>
<p>“Why are you here?” he said. “We aren’t causing any harm.” His mouth trembled as he spoke.</p>
<p>“We know,” I said, stepping forward. I held out my empty hands to him. “We’ve come to help. Is Sister Eugenia here?” He looked me up and down, and his jaw clenched.</p>
<p>“No,” said one of the others, an older woman, her face lined and wrinkled beneath her felt hat. “She left this morning to lead an expedition further into the swamp. We are close to finding the saint’s abode.”</p>
<p>“Why do you look so worried?” The woman’s face was drawn, her shoulders hunched. The two men who were with her exchanged a look.</p>
<p>“We have heard the place is guarded by...by one of the creatures the islanders worship,” she said, glancing with some unease at Derdre.</p>
<p>“A <i>Nádaig</i>?”</p>
<p>She nodded.</p>
<p>A mutter passed through the warriors who were with us. In the same moment, Constantin took hold of my wrist and started to pull me away.</p>
<p><i>They’ll kill it,</i> he said in my mind. His thoughts hit me in angry, anxious waves. <i>We have to stop them.</i></p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Memories of the Saint</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hey! Last time I updated, Bound wasn't pushed to the top of the list. If you left off the story with Constantin and Lily in New Serene, go back and read Chapter 9.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <i>Lily</i>
  </p>
</div><p>Nine of them perched on the rocks or leaned against trees, watching the <i>Nádaig</i> as it dug its claws into the dirt, closed its massive hands tight on its wooden spear, and growled at the threat it could smell but could not see. Their leader wanted to speak, but if she dared she would give them away. The time for planning and speculation was over. If the Enlightened had truly blessed their cause and gave them the strength, they would succeed in killing the demon and finding the relics of the Saint she knew must be here. If the Enlightened was merciful, none of them would die.</p><p>But that was pure delusion, and she wouldn’t allow herself that. The swamp had already claimed the lives of several of their brothers. She at least had to acknowledge that she would be responsible for more deaths today, if she couldn’t accept it. They were scholars, had dedicated their lives to uncovering the story of the Saint’s years on the island. They had followed her into the very thick of this swamp that seemed to nurture everything deadly and be hostile to all other life.</p><p>But none of them had signed up for a war.</p><p>Virgil already was sighting along the barrel of his rifle. He wouldn’t wait. She had to give the order.</p><p>She raised her hand.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>Constantin found them, nine of the Thélème scholars, their feet sodden and aching in their boots and their trousers covered in mud up to their knees, huddled against the rocks that overlooked a sheltered hollow and the mouth of a cave. Through our connection, it seemed as though I could see into their minds, experience their thoughts. I would have asked him about it, but there was no time. One breath more and we would be too late.</p><p>“North,” he said over his shoulder as he pulled me away from Derdre and her kin. “There’s a cave.”</p><p>Then he was pulling me across the distance with no more effort than it took to think of going. We were everywhere and in all things, and time stretched into something that could not be measured except in the breaths of trees or the paths the sun took across the sky.</p><p>We came back to our bodies in the place I had seen through the eyes of the woman, Sister Eugenia. Constantin had hold of my arm, but this time coming back to my body from the vastness of the island didn’t disorient me as badly. I looked at the world from a fixed point, from my own eyes. The air was warm and heavy with humidity on my skin. Stones dug into my feet. And behind me, the <i>Nádaig</i> shook itself, feathers and stones rustling and clacking together, and huffed an anxious breath.</p><p>“Stop!” Constantin shouted.</p><p>Shadows moved in the trees and behind rocks. Light glinted off metal as someone shifted. I made out the barrel of a rifle. It was still pointed toward the <i>Nádaig</i>, toward us, but the hands holding it hadn’t pulled the trigger yet.</p><p>I stepped forward. “Sister Eugenia,” I called. “Father Iustinius told us where you had gone. We’ve come to help you.”</p><p>There was a muttered exchange. Then a woman’s voice called out, “Who are you?”</p><p>Constantin answered before I could think how to reply. The question of who we were had become a complicated one. We had just appeared before them out of empty air; introducing ourselves as Constantin d’Orsay and Legate Lily de Sardet would lead to too many questions. “Friends,” Constantin answered, his voice carrying. “If you’ll let us be that.”</p><p><i>Perhaps there is no such thing as just enough truth?</i> Constantin said in my mind.</p><p><i>Perhaps,</i> I answered, <i>when our natures tell more than we’d like.</i></p><p>“We have no friends here.” It was a man’s voice this time. I saw the barrel of the rifle dip; it was the man who held it who had spoken.</p><p>“Virgil,” the woman said sharply. Then she stood and looked down at us from atop the rocks. Her mouth was a tense, white line, and there were shadowed hollows beneath her eyes. Her hands were bare. She held a pistol, tentatively, holding it away from her hip as if she didn’t quite trust it. Her clothes, the gray coat and trousers that the missionaries favored, were rumpled and stained with mud. She’d put her hair up, but tendrils of it had escaped and clung to her face. “Do you know why we’ve come here?” she asked.</p><p>“You think your saint lived here,” Constantin said.</p><p>She laughed, and there was a wry weariness to it. “I am certain of it,” she said. “Saint Lucius’s description was remarkably clear. And these creatures, the guardians, are found in the places that are sacred to the islanders, isn’t that true? The old sage, our Saint, was held in esteem by Vigsoneigad, and this is where he lived.”</p><p><i>She speaks very forcefully,</i> I said to Constantin. I had to keep myself from smiling. I hadn’t expected to like Eugenia at all, let alone so soon after she’d opened her mouth.</p><p><i>Derdre was right,</i> Constantin said. <i>You could be sisters.</i></p><p>Aloud he said, “You’re right.” Eugenia’s lips parted slightly, as if she’d been prepared to argue and now had no idea what to say. “He remembers,” Constantin added, gesturing toward the <i>Nádaig megamen</i> behind us, who shifted on his feet and blew out a hot breath that made the flames that clothed me flicker and dance.</p><p>“He remembers the old sage,” Constantin said. “He lived here with your saint as his apprentice. The saint would pray here in the morning when the sun touched this spot”—he gestured at the ground around us, dry and sandy in contrast to the swamp—“and he would climb these trees to pick fruit to break their fast.”</p><p>“What?” Eugenia said. “Are you saying…you’re saying this creature was once human?”</p><p>“He was. All the <i>Nádaig</i> were.”</p><p>“What is this heresy?” The man Eugenia had called Virgil stood, appearing from behind a tree. “Sister Eugenia—” he started, his face flushed an angry red, but Eugenia had already started to pick her way cautiously down the rocks.</p><p>She paused where rock gave way to sand and shoved her pistol into the sash around her waist, though she kept her hand on the grip. She looked from me to Constantin. “If you’re here to help us, as you say, does that mean we may pass? The…<i>Nádaig</i> will not harm us?”</p><p>“As long as we are here, and as long as you don’t cause any harm in return, he won’t harm you,” Constantin answered. The <i>Nádaig</i> took a step back and lowered his great head to peer at Eugenia over Constantin’s shoulder. He held his spear in both hands across his body, his arms lowered, his grip loose. Eugenia studied him in turn as though she might be able to find a human face behind the mask.</p><p>“We would want to take any relics that we find, to study them,” she said, finally managing to take her eyes off the <i>Nádaig</i>.</p><p>“You can study them here.”</p><p>That got an immediate response. A few dismayed murmurs rose among the scholars, and Eugenia took a deep breath, her shoulders tensing. “You don’t understand—” she started. Constantin cut her off with a sweep of his arm.</p><p>“This is a church,” he said. “More than that—this is where your saint ended his days with the Yecht Fradí. Who has the right to take anything from this place?”</p><p>“The right!” Virgil said. He came a little way down the rocks, but it was plain that he did not want to give up the advantage of height, the security he thought it gave him. He stared down at us. “Who are you?” he demanded. </p><p>“We are Yecht Fradí,” Constantin said. “That’s all you need to know.”</p><p>Virgil looked as though he wanted to say more, but Eugenia raised her hand. “Stop,” she said, looking over her shoulder at Virgil. “Let’s not make enemies.” She turned to us. “If we’re able to study the relics we find here, we won’t take anything without permission.”</p><p>“Or cause any harm,” Constantin pressed.</p><p>“Or cause any harm,” Eugenia echoed.</p><p>Constantin nodded and stepped aside, gesturing toward the mouth of the cave. “Shall we?”</p><p>The <i>Nádaig</i> growled behind his mask and straightened to his full height to look down at the scholars as he stepped out of our path to stand behind Constantin. It comforted me a little to see several of them hesitate before they came down to stand with Eugenia.</p><p>“I’ll go first,” I said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this cave has other residents.”</p><p><i>I’ll keep an eye out,</i> Constantin said. Virgil still had his gun, and it was plain he did not trust us. There may be others among the scholars who could pose a threat. For all they knew, we were natives who spoke the language of the continent better than most, natives who were untrustworthy at best and heretical at worst. I would rather have my back to them than leave Constantin exposed.</p><p>As I ducked into the mouth of the cave, he asked me, <i>How was that?</i></p><p>
  <i>I thought it went well. …No shots were fired, at least, and at times I feel as though I have to count that as a victory—</i>
</p><p><i>A low bar,</i> Constantin said, and I smiled into the dark.</p><p>
  <i>Yes. But Eugenia was listening to you. I suspect she’ll be thinking about what you said long after we leave them. And you are the only one who could have said it.</i>
</p><p>Constantin didn’t answer. He was reliving the conversation we’d just had in his thoughts, as I had done on so many occasions, taking score, tallying up a victory or a defeat. I had done that for the Congregation—or, more truthfully, for Constantin. He did it now on behalf of the dream he had for Tír Fradí.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>I had explored many caves on Tír Fradí, from sacred spaces where shafts of sunlight illuminated painted walls and runnels of water had been carefully channeled to nurture miniature forests to dark pits where the scrape of tenlan claws and the rasp of the beasts’ breathing had filled me with terror and magic that I couldn’t control. This cave wasn’t like any of those others. The entrance opened up into a large chamber. Light and a small waterfall fell from a crevice in the ceiling and, below, trees and ferns grew next to a small pool of water. Dosantats clung to the rocks above, wrapped in their wings. But there were also signs of human habitation, woven mats and baskets, rotting now, and obsidian tools. They lay discarded, tucked under the leaves of ferns. But once, people had sat on those mats and worked together, perhaps islanders and Saint Matheus’s disciples both.</p><p>The Dosantats stirred when the others came in behind me, their exclamations echoing off the walls as they saw the first signs that the writings they had followed had guided them true. Only then did it occur to me that I might not be able to do this. I had never tried to control the power that had put everything living on the island to sleep the night that Constantin and I had bound ourselves to the volcano.</p><p>Constantin felt me tense, felt how my breath was trapped in my chest. <i>Expect it, Lily,</i> he said, and though he stood behind the others in the entrance to the chamber, I felt him at my back. I felt his hands wrap bracingly around my arms, his breathing slow and steady. One of the Dosantats untucked its wrinkled head and peered down at us, its pointed ears pricking, and I felt that, too. I could sense the creature’s mind shift from sleep to its waking sharpness. I reached out. Its mind was like a moth in a basket or a flame under glass, fluttering and flickering against my power as I encompassed it. I did something that felt like smothering, pressing down slowly and gently, and Constantin and I both watched as the Dosantats breathed out in a shudder and buried its head back into the shelter of its wings.</p><p><i>Easy,</i> Constantin said. <i>And the others?</i></p><p>I reached for the other Dosantats and nudged them deeper into sleep. When I came back to myself, Eugenia had come closer and was watching me. If she had noticed anything odd in my stillness or how I’d stared at the creatures, she gave no sign of it.</p><p>“Are they any threat?”</p><p>I shook my head. “They won’t wake if we’re quiet.”</p><p>“So, not for the moment. It will make our work difficult, if we have to creep around these beasts.”</p><p>“You might ask Derdre about them, or Ler. They may be able to tell you when it is safe to enter the cave or how to prepare a potion to make them sleep soundly.”</p><p>“Will that work?” she asked, arching her brows.</p><p>“I used something similar once,” I replied. The trial of the waters had been a lifetime ago, so far removed from the present moment that I couldn’t truly remember the paralyzing anxiety I’d felt before undertaking it.</p><p>Thoughts of the trial led unerringly to thoughts of Síora. I pointed toward what looked like another passage, deeper in the cave. “Shall we go on?”</p><p>Eugenia turned, studying the floor, the walls of the cave; then she nodded. “I don’t think this was where they lived. The disciples must have used this room for the light.</p><p>“Will you keep an eye out for us?” she asked.</p><p>We dropped from a stone ledge into another chamber, this one larger but unlit. But I saw the great white Dosantats almost before I felt its sleeping mind, and I reached out to it and the others that roosted in the chamber to make sure they wouldn’t wake. The scholars tread cautiously around the white Dosantats as they crossed the chamber to study the small huts that had been hollowed out of the walls of the cave.</p><p><i>Lily</i>. Constantin had found another passage that I’d missed, little more than a crack in the wall. He was running his hand along the rock when I reached him.</p><p>
  <i>Can we fit?</i>
</p><p>
  <i>You, perhaps. Perhaps Sister Eugenia and some of the others. As for me, I suspect I’d only plug the hole up.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>But what a magnificent cork you would be.</i>
</p><p>If we’d been alone, I would have gotten a smack on my rump for that—I knew because he sent me the thought quite clearly. As it was, he only smiled at me in a way that promised he would even the score later.</p><p>I had to persuade Eugenia to let me go first. She knew we were close to more discoveries, and excitement had overrun her caution. But I could sense the sleeping minds of Dosantats in front of us and went ahead of her to send them deeper into sleep.</p><p>There were more huts here and intriguing bundles stockpiled near the pond. Constantin appeared at my side as the others fanned out to explore.</p><p><i>You managed to squeeze through?</i> I asked.</p><p><i>Something like that.</i> He had used magic to cross the space, then. I wove my fingers between his while the others were distracted. At least we didn’t have to be separated.</p><p>A wooden chest was tucked against one wall of the chamber. Eugenia knelt and wiped the dust off the top and rotting leather straps. “This is cedar, from the continent,” she murmured as two of the scholars who had followed us bent to peer over her shoulders. Constantin and I stood back. Virgil did the same and stared up at the sleeping Dosantats, his arms crossed over his chest.</p><p>“Do you see in the center?” one of the scholars asked. “The lamp.”</p><p>“Yes, you’re right,” Eugenia said. The rusty hinges squeaked and rattled as she eased the chest open.</p><p>We heard the collective breath the scholars released before we could see what they had found. Eugenia began lifting objects carefully from the box, one by one, handing them to her companions—first a helmet fashioned in a style similar to helmets I had seen in the market at San Matheus and on the heads of Inquisitors, but this helmet was plated in gold. It must have been several hundred years old, but the metal shone as if it had been recently polished. A breastplate followed, then gauntlets, cloth breeches dyed burgundy red, and tall black cuisses, the leather worn and still supple. The scholars handled each item with care, hardly seeming to touch them with more than the tips of their fingers. Even Virgil seemed taken in by the discovery. He went closer, reaching out to take the breastplate and examine it, running his fingers over the scrollwork.</p><p>“Are they…?” he asked.</p><p>“The Saint’s?” Eugenia finished, twisting where she knelt to look up at him. “I think we can safely say so. No one ever knew what became of the armor Emperor Julianus gave him when he named Saint Matheus a protector of the empire. He must have brought it with him to Teer Fradee.” She sat back on her heels, her hands resting on her thighs, loosely clutching one of the leather boots. “I never thought we would find… These are treasures.”</p><p>Her gaze shifted to Constantin, and I could read the question on her face, even though she didn’t speak the words.</p><p>Constantin sighed and smiled wryly at her, and said, “Take them. They’re relics from your country; you can take them.”</p><p><i>Were you this easy-going in negotiations as Governor?</i> I asked him.</p><p><i>The ambassadors we received hardly smiled at me like that,</i> he answered. Eugenia was beaming. Her companions forgot to keep their voices lowered in their excitement, until she put a finger warningly over her mouth. But still her smile lit up her face. She looked lovely, even with her hair mussed and limp and her face smudged with dirt.</p><p>
  <i>And if they had—</i>
</p><p><i>I’m sure the effect would have been frightening,</i> he finished. <i>Most of them were dried up old sticks.</i></p><p>The boot knocked against the side of the chest as Eugenia lifted it, and something rattled against the wood.</p><p>“There’s something else here.” Her fingers searched the bottom of the box, until she pulled the object out, cupping it in the palm of her hand. A ring, one of the rings mages used to concentrate and direct their power.</p><p>At first I didn’t understand why the scholars stared at it or why their brows were furrowed in confusion, until one of them asked, “But what is it made of?”</p><p>Eugenia ran a finger over the band. Its surface was dull and black and pocked with small holes. It looked rough and unfinished, a poor piece of work compared to the silver or gold bands most mages wore that were elaborately engraved or patterned in motifs of religious icons or flowers or ivy vines. “It feels like stone. –Why would he use such a thing?” she asked. I knew the nature of that question. Eugenia wouldn’t let it rest until she had an answer.</p><p><i>Do you feel that?</i> Constantin asked.</p><p>When I answered, <i>No,</i> he reached for me with his mind, and then I did feel it:  a subtle current in the air, like light shimmering across the surface of water or heat rising from stone. Constantin yearned toward it. But I felt the sting of it on my skin, like strands of thorns or fire.</p><p>“Is it the ring?” I asked him in a murmur. I had to draw my mind away from his until I couldn’t feel whatever power the ring was casting off. Even so, my nerves still prickled, and I rubbed my hands over my arms until the only sensation I felt was the cool, damp air of the cave.</p><p>“Yes,” Constantin said. “Do all magic rings feel like that?”</p><p>“I don’t think so.”</p><p>“Look—they feel it as well.” The mages were passing the ring from hand to hand. Some of them tensed when the stone band touched their skin, some sighed, some shivered; they all seemed to react to it. But none of them looked as if it pained them.</p><p>“Leave that here,” Constantin said, raising his voice so that it carried.</p><p>Eugenia reached for the ring, then stood, turning to face us. “This is a priceless relic,” she started. Her voice was even, but she had closed her fist around the ring. “Nothing in the Saint’s writings or the writings of Saint Lucius mentions it. We need to study it carefully, and—”</p><p>“You can study it here.”</p><p>“The ring belonged to Saint Matheus,” Eugenia protested, her voice rising. “Doesn’t that give us the right to take it back? You just gave us permission—though I’m not sure we need it—to take his armor. Why should this be different?”</p><p>“You don’t need to do more than look at the ring to know it’s different,” Constantin said. “It’s made of volcanic rock; you can see that. It was made from the bones of the island. It stays.”</p><p>She looked both of us in the face. When I might have expected her to protest further, instead she nodded. But the tension in her jaw, the set of her shoulders betrayed the fight that was still in her.</p><p>“You can study the ring here,” I said, gently, to try to take a little of the bite out of Constantin’s words, “along with the rest of the relics that belong to the island. Saint Matheus chose to spend his last days in this place. If you spend more time here, you may come to understand his reasons. …And perhaps your saint belongs as much to Tír Fradí as to Thélème?”</p><p>The last was a calculated risk, a coin I had tossed that was as likely to land heads up as it was to land face down in the dirt. I wasn’t surprised at the murmurs and wordless cries of protest that followed, or Virgil’s sound of disgust, louder than the rest. Eugenia waved a hand distractedly to quiet them. She was looking around the cave again, her eyes lingering on the modest huts set into the wall, the water cascading into the pool and the dust-covered bundles piled beside it, the spirals carved into the rock wall. She looked up at the Dosantats roosting on the ceiling.</p><p>“We can make sure you have safe passage to come here whenever you’d like,” I said.</p><p>“It may take months of study,” she said, looking at me sidelong.</p><p>“Then you’ll have months.”</p><p>Finally, she nodded and knelt, placing the ring carefully back into its chest and settling the lid into place. “Let’s go on,” she said as she stood.</p><p>The last chamber might have been the interior of a doneigad’s roundhouse. It was nearly perfectly circular. Walls had been constructed of carved stone panels, and the ceiling was covered in strips of bark. The amber light of dusk shone through a hole in the roof of the cave that was too perfectly round to be natural and illuminated two large frescoes at the back of the chamber, as vivid and colorful as the others I’d seen on the island, though their subject was one I had not seen before.</p><p>“Saint Matheus,” Eugenia breathed. There was the saint in his frock, in one fresco kneeling at the feet of a doneigad in his colorful robes to have his face painted, in the other kneeling in prayer before the face in the mountain, <i>en on mil frichtimen</i>. Eugenia went to the second fresco, almost seeming to forget her companions. She bent close to the painting, her fingers hovering over the saint’s hands clutching his chaplet. “Did he join the cult of the natives?”</p><p>“Look here, Sister,” said one of the scholars, her hand hovering over a large stone slab at the back of the room, a work table or perhaps an altar.</p><p>“The scriptures say he used one very like this,” Eugenia said, lifting a string of beads. They were dull gray and crudely made, compared to the fine beads made of silver or semi-precious stones the scholars wore at their own belts. Eugenia put her hand to her mouth, holding the beads as if they might break apart in her palm. “This was where he lived,” she murmured.</p><p><i>Be careful,</i> I thought, watching Eugenia. Constantin echoed my thoughts.</p><p>
  <i>This is going to be ugly.</i>
</p><p>We could see the schism in the faces of the scholars. One or two looked as awed as Eugenia. They wandered the room, reaching out to touch one of the frescoes or some small, significant bit of clutter on the floor before drawing their hands back as if they feared the whole place would disintegrate. Most were silent, huddled in an anxious, uncertain group in the center of the chamber. Virgil’s face was thunderous.</p><p>“What is this?” he sputtered, gesturing to take in the chamber, the frescos, Eugenia with the chaplet. “Do you really believe Saint Matheus would forsake the Enlightened for the worship of a demon? –The cost of your education was certainly wasted if your mind can so easily be led astray. This is the work of the islanders! They have fabricated this—this <i>fantasy</i> to fit the saint into their cult of the unnatural.”</p><p>I wished for Síora then. She would not have hesitated to confront Virgil and his prejudice. Constantin and I were the only ones here who could speak for the islanders. But fortunately, Eugenia was not too afraid to speak for herself.</p><p>“The Saint’s writings led us here,” she said sharply. “If you’re parting ways with the words of Saint Matheus, who has gone astray?”</p><p>Constantin added, “You’ve lived with the islanders long enough. You might have learned something from them. It seems your saint did.”</p><p>I kept one eye on Virgil as I went to study one of the symbol stones that stood against the wall. It was carved with the Yecht Fradí symbol for the sun, but there was writing underneath in the alphabet of the continent. As Constantin spoke, I knelt beside the stone. The writing was in an old dialect; it took me a moment to decipher it. “There’s writing here,” I said when I’d finally managed it. “Saint Matheus or one of his disciples must have written this:  ‘The light and the earth are the two faces of a same power’.”</p><p>Eugenia came to my side and bent to trace the words with her fingers. “The tablets we’ve found seemed to be leading to this same idea. These words were written by the same hand.”</p><p>“There is another tablet there,” I said, nodding toward a stone that lay on the floor near the center of the room.</p><p>“This is heresy,” Virgil grated.</p><p>Constantin moved to stand beside me as Eugenia straightened. The light of discovery had left her face, leaving it grim. “That isn’t for you to decide,” she said. She had forced her voice to calm, but I was close enough to see how her hand shook. “We will catalogue what we’ve discovered here. We’ll send it back to the cardinals, and they will be the ones to interpret it, in their wisdom. Go back to Eden, Brother Virgil. It’s plain you have no appetite for this.”</p><p>“I never expected to find a reason to be thankful that we’re stranded in this hellish place. Your heresy will never reach Thélème.”</p><p>“Enough,” said Constantin. When I looked up at him, his face and his tunic were bright, his hair shining gold. The rest of the room seemed darker in comparison, as if he’d pulled all the light from it. Virgil took a startled step backward when he spoke. “Your choice is to leave on your own or with help.” Part of Constantin hoped it would be the latter.</p><p>Whatever protest Virgil would have spoken was strangled in his throat. He cast around, looking into the faces of the other scholars. But it was plain he would find no support there. The others were frightened, but they were true scholars, as Eugenia was. They would follow the evidence wherever it led.</p><p>With a muttered curse, Virgil strode from the chamber. In the silence, we heard his footsteps pounding the stone outside the doorway.</p><p>“Will he be able to make it back to camp?” Eugenia asked us.</p><p>The corner of Constantin’s mouth quirked up as the light faded from his face. “Would it be such a tragedy if he didn’t?”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>The light was nearly gone by the time Eugenia settled her companions enough that they could start cataloguing all of the relics in leather-bound journals they pulled from their packs. When we could barely see each other’s shapes in the dark, she looked up from where she sat in the middle of the floor, bent over the tablet. “We’ll have to return in the morning,” she said. The tone of her voice was wistful. If it wasn’t for the Dosantats—or perhaps the anxieties of some of her companions—she might have set up camp in the cave and never left.</p><p>They left the saint’s chaplet and all of the other relics they had found in the chamber. Three of the scholars had brought torches and lit the way as we went back through the cave. Eugenia and several of the others carried the pieces of Saint Mattheus’s armor carefully strapped to their packs.</p><p>We found Virgil lying against the rocks near the entrance of the cave. His face was pale in the moonlight. He clutched his leg. He’d wrapped a strip of fabric from his shirt around his thigh, and the bandage and his trousers both were stained dark with blood. His rifle lay on the ground beside his hand, the barrel open and half loaded.</p><p>“What happened?” Eugenia asked. She nudged the rifle out of the way with her foot, set down her pack and pulled it open, digging into it until she pulled out a tight roll of fabric, more bandages.</p><p>Virgil’s head lolled to one side as he looked up at her. “The demon,” he said. His voice was hoarse. He must have been lying here for an hour at least, while we explored the cave.</p><p>The ground shook beneath us and a flash of blue light illuminated the cave as the <i>Nádaig megamen</i> drove his spear into the earth just outside. I heard screams, and Eugenia startled back, dropping the bandages.</p><p><i>Why is he doing this?</i> I asked Constantin. I reached for the bond between us, so I could sense the <i>Nádaig</i>’s mind as he did.</p><p>Constantin didn’t answer me but spoke to Virgil instead. “He knows you have it.”</p><p>Virgil had closed his eyes. He shook his head weakly. His lips moved, but if he said something, it was too soft for us to hear.</p><p>“This is a truly stupid way to die,” Constantin said. “Give me the ring, and you can hobble out of here.”</p><p>“You took the ring?” Eugenia asked. Virgil did not respond. She nudged his leg, and he groaned and nodded once. He raised his hand and fumbled at the pouch he wore on the strap across his chest until Eugenia pushed his hand away and pulled out the ring herself. She put it into Constantin’s waiting hand.</p><p>“Go,” Constantin said, more gently this time. “Take him with you. The <i>Nádaig</i> won’t hurt you if you respect this place. Derdre should be here soon if she isn’t already.” He looked at me, and I nodded. Derdre would have set out to follow us here as soon as we’d left. “Ask the Cengeden Anedas for help to carry on with your investigation.”</p><p>Eugenia waited beside us as two men took Virgil under the arms and pulled him up. In the end, they had to carry him from the cave with their arms linked behind his back and under his legs. His blood had soaked into the dirt of the cave floor, but if they were able to stop the bleeding soon, he might live.</p><p>“Thank you,” Eugenia said, looking from Constantin to me. “I never expected to learn so much in a single day.”</p><p>“Aren’t you afraid?” I asked. “Of the Inquisition?”</p><p>“I know I should be.” She sighed and looked down at her pack, Saint Mattheus’s helmet strapped to the top. “‘Heresy is purged by fire,’” she quoted. “But the Inquisition isn’t on Teer Fradee any longer. We’ll have time—time to study all of Saint Mattheus’s writings and put together a full report. They’ll realize these are the Saint’s true teachings. I have to believe that.”</p><p>We watched her go, watched her turn to look at the <i>Nádaig</i> where he stood guard. When the night swallowed her, Constantin opened his hand and looked at the ring sitting in his palm. He ran his thumb over its edge.</p><p><i>Are you thinking of keeping it?</i> I asked, and regretted it when I felt again the stinging lash of its power. I drew my mind away from his.</p><p>He didn’t answer me.</p><p>“Constantin, I don’t want to be near it.”</p><p>He looked up suddenly and smiled, though there was something like regret in it. “I know,” he said, taking my hand in his empty one. “I’m sorry. …I don’t know why I’m drawn to it. It’s such a small thing.</p><p>“You know I would never willingly hurt you,” he said. “The ring stays here.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>1. Despite her horrible hairstyle (and really, what are you going to do with your hair in a swamp?), Eugenia is actually a badass.</p><p>2. In my head canon, Theleme was once ruled by an imperial line. But there was a break in the succession, and the church took over rule of the empire.</p><p>3. I decided a couple of weeks ago that I wanted to post the next chapter on Election Day for everyone like me who wants a bit of a distraction. And I didn't say anything about it when I posted the last chapter because I thought there was no way it was going to happen, considering my pace lately. I'm giving myself kudos for actually pulling it off!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. The Chase</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <i>Lily</i>
  </p>
</div><p>One afternoon, weeks after Dunncas had greeted us in Vigyigidaw by pointing to two mats laid by the fire, saying, “Sit. Meditate,” I found Constantin sitting on his mat, growing roots. His eyes were closed, his face calm. His thoughts were drifting, appearing and dissipating before I could grasp them.</p>
<p>Sitting with our thoughts this way—without directing them or following them, letting them come and go quietly—hadn’t come naturally to either of us. Sitting for so long had been hard enough for Constantin. Not an hour had passed that first day before he was fidgeting next to me, crossing and uncrossing his legs, picking at the fur trim of his boots, sighing and occasionally chuckling at some thought or another.</p>
<p>His thoughts were a ferment. Just as my thoughts would grow quiet, one of his would hurtle through my mind, questions and wonderings that tugged at me until we would find ourselves in a silent conversation. Our eyes might have been closed, our hands resting on our laps, but that stillness did not go deeper than appearances.</p>
<p>Dunncas seemed to know. He appeared without fail with a quiet word or a touch when we had completely gone astray.</p>
<p>Once Constantin sighed after Dunncas had placed a hand on his shoulder. <i>How is it possible to stop thinking?</i> he asked me when we could no longer hear Dunncas’ footsteps. <i>Are we meant to beat the thoughts off with sticks?</i></p>
<p>I took the chance to stretch, twisting my spine and easing my legs out straight. I’d lost the feeling in one of my feet and hissed out a breath, biting my lip as my nerves woke and my whole leg tingled. <i>You may need more than a stick,</i> I said, glancing at him sidelong. He smiled at me, and though it may have been closer to a grimace, there was nothing repentant about it.</p>
<p><i>A fiery club, then,</i> he replied, <i>to knock them out of my head and over the horizon. But then I picture a battle against monstrous thoughts in my head, and I’m lost again.</i></p>
<p>We stayed in Vigyigidaw into the winter, our second winter on Tír Fradí. The nights grew longer; the days were cool and rainy. And for the first time since we’d arrived on the island, my days fell into a rhythm. We sat with the <i>sin ol menawi</i>, who rose before the sun each morning to meditate beside the fire in the warmth of the roundhouse they shared. At first, we must have disrupted the others’ meditations as much as we did our own. They didn’t understand us; they didn’t trust us. Yewan, who had once told me how he had given his dreams to the river to carry, looked at us stone-faced, and I often caught him and Morian in whispered conversation, glancing at us when they thought we wouldn’t notice. I had to close my lips on all the things I wanted to say to them and watch and wait while they talked with Dunncas and watched us and the days passed.</p>
<p>Eventually, our minds did grow quieter, and as they did, we breathed with a thousand breaths, felt each other’s thoughts as if our minds had pooled together and every thought was a ripple across the surface. We sensed the waking minds around us and those that were dreaming. At first it seemed an impossible task to keep those thoughts out, to not pay attention. It had been Dunncas who suggested that, instead of fighting, we surrender. We should let go of ourselves, become as empty as the sky, so there would be nothing for thoughts to catch upon.</p>
<p><i>Let go.</i> I heard Constantin’s voice in my mind, an echo of the first hours after we had bound ourselves to the volcano, when I had lost myself in the island. Now it was easier for me to leave my body and become everything and nothing at all than it was to still my thoughts.</p>
<p>Constantin became more dedicated to the practice than I ever would have expected. He often sat alone or with some of the others under the great tree that shaded the village’s central fire, meditating into the evening. The first time I asked him why he was doing it, he couldn’t give me an answer. The second time I asked, he still couldn’t. But one night, he settled down next to me at the fire and took my hand, holding it in his lap. “I used to feel…attacked,” he said. He was looking down, tracing a pattern in my palm with his thumb. “By everything. Something would happen, a letter would come or a petitioner would demand something of me, and I wouldn’t be able to let it go until I had backed it into a corner or it had beaten me down so thoroughly that…” He shook his head, laughed. “Well. You know better than most.”</p>
<p>“But now?” I asked.</p>
<p>He looked up at me and smiled, and if we’d been alone I might have kissed him before he could say anything. “This helps,” he said, “knowing that thoughts come and go, that they don’t have any power of their own. It helps.” Then he took my chin in his hand and kissed me. <i>Let them see.</i></p>
<p>The next afternoon I found him meditating under the tree, fine white filaments growing out of his fingers and hands and out of his legs into the ground. His cheek was cool and unyielding beneath my hand.</p>
<p>“Constantin.” I knelt in front of him and took his hands, but the roots began to tear when I lifted them. I took him by his shoulders, shook him. “Constantin!”</p>
<p>He jerked and gasped. When he opened his eyes, his gaze met mine, but it was as if he did not recognize me. No—he did not see me. His eyes were flat, unfocused. When I reached out with my mind, I couldn’t find him.</p>
<p>Then I felt him returning to himself, the edges of his mind condensing, the spark of concern he felt when he finally looked at my face. </p>
<p>“What happened?” he asked, his brows drawing together.</p>
<p>When I tried to speak, my breath sobbed out of me.</p>
<p>He started to raise his hands, then stopped when the roots caught. I sat back on my heels as he yanked his hands upward; the sound the roots made as they tore made me shudder. He looked at his palms, rubbed his hands together, and laughed hollowly. Then he looked at me.</p>
<p>“It’s fine, Lily,” he said, low and insistent. “I’m fine. Look—” The roots were coming away as he rubbed his hands and falling to the ground. With his fingers, he tore through the roots coming from his legs, then held his hands in front of him for me to see. “Not a mark on me.” It was true. His hands were smooth and perfect. His trousers were whole, unmarked. There was no sign that he’d been growing into the ground just a few moments before.</p>
<p>I took in a shuddering breath and glared at him. “I couldn’t reach you.”</p>
<p>“But you did,” he said. He took my hands and rubbed his thumbs over them, leaning toward me. “And you always will.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>When I left Vigyigidaw, it was to go to visit Slan or the colonists in Eden or Eugenia, who had enlisted a small army of her countrymen and islanders to build a camp that was snug enough to see them through the winter in Védvílvie. Constantin went with me more often than not, though he preferred to spend the days with Dunncas, learning about the clans who sent messengers to the high king or practicing the islanders’ language with the <i>sin ol menawi</i>. It took weeks, but Yewan and Morian set aside their mistrust of us enough to take us to Couwis, the cave of knowledge that all the village’s <i>sin ol menawi</i> visited before binding themselves to the island. This time, when she told the story depicted by the murals in Yecht Fradi, I understood most of it. I didn’t tell her that I’d come here once before with Aphra to spy on her and her <i>minundhanem</i>. Sometimes we can only aspire to be worthy of someone’s trust, though we haven’t earned it.</p>
<p>When I traveled to San Matheus and Hikmet, I walked through Tír Anemen. I had crossed over to the land of spirits many times since we’d come to Vigyigidaw. Death called me there. When one of the Yecht Fradi died, I saw the fire of her spirit at the edges of my vision, like a star shining at midday, until I found the grave, dark except for the spirit’s fire and the fire limning the roots that held up the walls, and returned the spirit to the soul of all things. I walked close to Tír Anemen now. I no longer needed to call the other world; the horizon was beneath my feet.</p>
<p>Constantin hadn’t come to San Matheus or Hikmet yet. In Tír Anemen, the cities looked like charcoal sketches of ancient ruins, but sketches done in exacting detail, with none of the romanticism that was ingrained in art. No plants had grown to mute and soften the edges of collapsed roofs and walls or hide the bones of those who had not fled in time. In San Matheus, I found the ghosts of the eruption we had caused and met their confusion quietly, with an open hand. And I found those who had inhabited Tír Anemen much longer, the ghosts of the Coin Guard’s coup. They were fighting in the Place of Punishment and on the steps to the Mother Cardinal’s palace, firing their silent guns, falling, then rising again in an endless shadow play of war.</p>
<p>I couldn’t hold the attention of the soldiers for more than a moment when their enemies were there in front of them and they could remember nothing else except the fight. Standing in the square, I found something new inside myself. The power that welled up in me when a spirit returned to the earth—I could call it, channel it like water through a fountain. When I stood there at a loss in the midst of the battle, I found that power and tugged at it until the flame in my hand grew into a pillar of fire. Then I directed that fire at the nearest man running past me when his rifle held across his chest. A flash, and when the light faded, he was gone. The fire split and twisted around me, arcing through the air, and each time it made contact with one of the spirits, light filled the sky, erasing the city before me. One by one, they left the battlefield behind, until I was the only one left.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>When I climbed over the ruined gates and entered Hikmet, the city was on fire still. A quiet conflagration rose from the northwestern quarter. The flames rose into the sky, and in the silence I could hear screams, high and thin, as if they came from a long way off. But I knew exactly where they were—two blocks away, underground and encased in stone in the ruins of Asili’s laboratory. There were so many voices, crying out in the common tongue and in Yecht Fradi. I leaned against the nearest wall, then slid down it to wrap my arms around my legs and rest my forehead against my knees. I didn’t want to go back to that place, alone.</p>
<p>I couldn’t. I had destroyed the laboratory; volcanic rock spilled out of the entrance to the cave and filled all of its passages. How could I reach the spirits who were trapped there?</p>
<p>If I focused on the problem, I could stand and walk toward the screams. I passed through the arch that led to the cave and climbed the undulating shelf of black rock, into the fire. I couldn’t reach them, but my flame could.</p>
<p>The sharp edges of the rock cut into my palms when I pressed them down, but I only pressed harder. I would need all of my fire for this. Against the conflagration, my own fire seemed nothing more than a candle flame, but still I let it pour out of me. It burned through the rock, insubstantial but bright. There were so many trapped here, I couldn’t sense them all, only the flames cast off by their suffering. More and more, I pushed fire into the rock until my head swam and I had to lean on my elbows. And little by little, the flames around me dimmed, the screams grew quieter, until the last flicker of fire died and the last voice was extinguished. I lay there catching my breath with my eyes closed in the quiet until even the ghostly afterimages against my eyelids were gone.</p>
<p>Once I could stand, I walked along all of Hikmet’s streets, through all of its courtyards and laboratories, freeing those I found who had died in the eruption and earlier, in their homes or the city’s hospitals, and when I reached the stone quays at the harbor, I opened the way between the two worlds and stepped out into the evening light streaming below storm clouds that were banked offshore. The sea was steely gray and peaked with white-capped waves. I stood at the edge of the quay for a long moment with my eyes closed, pointing my face into the wind and listening to the waves ceaselessly breaking over the rocks.</p>
<p>Constantin knew when I had come back. He was in Vignamri, in the midst of a group preparing the day’s harvest for the evening meal. The smoke from the fire was fragrant with the smells of cooking meat and green herbs, and someone was singing. Constantin was laughing, talking. His mood was so different from my own. I felt his mind touch mine and the way his pulse beat fast and his blood ran hot, and he felt the heaviness of my thoughts. And he decided to come anyway.</p>
<p>In the moment before he reached me, I opened my eyes and saw the sun catch on white peaks on the horizon. Sails. There was a Naut ship offshore, heading south along the coast.</p>
<p>Constantin’s leather boots slapped against the stone behind me as he came down the stairs. “Will you put down your work for a while?” he said, raising his voice to carry over the wind.</p>
<p>Was it work? The answer came as soon as I’d asked the question. No, it wasn’t work. Whether I wanted it or not, I had become the spirit of Tír Anemen. The silence of that gray place was in me, even here in the living world. Its air chilled my skin. I couldn’t ignore the spirits that lingered there between one life and the next, and I didn’t want to. Returning them to the earth was one thing I could do that was only for the good. And I wanted that; I wouldn’t let it go.</p>
<p>But still, Tír Anemen wasn’t all that I was.</p>
<p>With Constantin’s eyes on me, a shiver of desire went down my spine to settle and bloom low in my belly. It was his desire, but my own feelings answered it. I was beginning to be sure of my own thoughts and feelings in the tangle that was the two of us together, and when the idea came to me, when the thought of it made me smile and bite my lip, I knew it was truly mine.</p>
<p>Constantin paused on the stair. When I turned and he saw what I’d become, he rubbed a hand across his mouth and considered me for a moment before he laughed.</p>
<p>“All right, then,” he said, his lips twisted in a smile, and I laughed at him the way the <i>Nádaig</i> laughed, all twitching tentacles and sparks. “Let’s see what these <i>Nádaig</i> get up to.”</p>
<p>He started toward me again and as he did, he changed, becoming taller, massive. His skin became a shell harder and thicker than armor. His eyes yellowed; a long beard of tentacles sprouted from his chin. His feet, now several times larger than a man’s and tipped with claws, scraped the stone. He reached for me with strangely bent arms. Just as his hands would have closed around my wrists, they found empty air instead—I had become a gull with a snowy back and black head, and the wind carried me away out of his reach.</p>
<p>I flew; he chased. My heart drummed in my chest. The wind lifted me as if I weighed nothing, and with every tilt of my wings, I felt the current change. When I cried out in the gull’s voice it was for joy at my speed and the cunning of my wings. When I dove low over the waves, Constantin was right behind me, carried on the current I created. He could catch me, but not yet.</p>
<p>We became songbirds in the forest, ducking and fluttering between branches and leaves, chasing each other over the trunks of the trees. In Vighulgsob, we became ulgs, growling and dodging around each other in the shallow pools until we incited a riot of ulgs and children, who screamed in delight and kicked up rainbows until they were soaked. We were flighty tetra; we were powerful tenlans. In the forest of Wenshavarr, we became a deer, and I felt as though I was flying again. I hardly felt my feet touch the ground; every footfall was the start of another leap. Constantin nipped at me, urging me on. Faster, faster. Neither one of us sensed the <i>Nádaig</i> until we were right on top of him.</p>
<p>I might have laughed, if I’d had the throat to laugh, at the sound the <i>Nádaig magamen</i> made when he jumped backward and hunched his shoulders, a kind of choked growl that rose in pitch as if with a question. I had already bolted past him before I could stop, but Constantin dug in his heels and stumbled to a halt in front of him. Almost before he’d stopped, he became a man again and held out his hands to the <i>Nádaig</i>.</p>
<p>“Easy,” he said, his voice hoarse and breathless with running. “Just us, friend.” The <i>Nádaig</i> eyed him from behind his mask, then finally he snorted and shook himself.</p>
<p>When Constantin turned, he found me in my own shape and smiling at him. “Am I too fast for you?” I hadn’t had enough time to catch my own breath, but I wasn’t going to let Constantin see that.</p>
<p>“Declaring victory already?” he asked with a raised brow. He started toward me. “Who said I was finished?”</p>
<p>“You’re obviously exhausted,” I said, backing away carefully over the uneven ground as he came closer. My cheeks hurt from grinning. “Perhaps you should rest and—” He lunged for me, and I spun away, clapping my hands over my mouth to muffle the shriek that burst out of me.</p>
<p>I darted into the forest. My body was as light as a gull, as fast as a deer. I could have run for days, sustained by the feel of the wind against my body and my heels striking the earth. We ran almost the entire length of the island, and eventually, without thinking about it, I left my body and became only the shadows under the trees and the creatures hiding in them.</p>
<p>Constantin caught me then. I was the little bit of darkness and death in everything around him; he only had to take a bit of shadow and shape me out of it. He sculpted my arms and legs, the curves of my hips and breasts. Then my face took shape under his hands and lips. He remembered my body perhaps better than I did. As his hands moved over my skin, I saw myself as he had seen me moments before, shedding fire as I ran through the trees, smiling and breathless. <i>Light,</i> he thought, as his mouth trailed along my neck and my breath caught in my chest. <i>Free.</i></p>
<p>Out of all the shapes I could take, this would always be the one I loved best. This body thrilled when Constantin laid me down, nuzzled my chest and pressed his lips to my breasts. In this body, I could wrap my legs around his hips and weave my fingers through his. In this body, the fire wasn’t only on my skin but flared to life in my belly as he moved in me and his fingers circled and stroked between my legs. This mouth could smile against his lips. These eyes could watch the way his gaze grew dark and he bit his lip and bent his head as he came closer to losing himself. And this mind could rest in his.</p>
<p>
  <i>If I’d known you worshipped me so much, I would have taken better advantage of it.</i>
</p>
<p>He knew me too well. I lay in the circle of his arm, and his free hand captured mine before I could poke or punch him. <i>I had forgotten about your inflated opinion of yourself. Thank you for the reminder.</i></p>
<p>
  <i>My love.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>What?</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>You forgot to say ‘my love’.</i>
</p>
<p>I looked up at him and couldn’t think of anything to say. He stroked my cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Why are you blushing?” he said aloud. “You’ll have to think of something to call me. Something good,” he added sternly.</p>
<p>“And what will you call me?” I asked.</p>
<p>He shifted onto his side and rested his hand on my hip. “My heart,” he said, and he looked at me so solemnly that I couldn’t have said anything even if I had the words.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>The next morning, the ship had reached the coast off New Sérène. Light reflected off the white sails as the sun rose, and they stood out bright against the sky. The Nauts had come closer to shore. I could see the ship’s hull, but they were still too far away for me to make out the name painted on the bow or the shape of the figurehead.</p>
<p>Constantin had come out of his meditation when I’d left Vigyigidaw this morning, but I’d gone into Tír Anemen before he could ask any questions. He must have thought that someone had died in the night, and I was going to meet their spirit. I kept my thoughts close as I left so he wouldn’t catch my true purpose.</p>
<p>Now I squatted on my heels on what remained of one of the piers, in a rift between the two worlds. Silent flames licked at the edges of the tear and cold air spilled through; there was a sheen of ice on the boards in front of my feet. Constantin didn’t seem to be able to sense me in Tír Anemen. I was counting on that as I sat and tried to gather my thoughts, to plan what I would say. He would think this was a mad idea. And it was; I had to own that. But he would also try to forbid me from following through with it, and in the daytime, he might be able to.</p>
<p>But, in the end, there was only so much I could plan. I didn’t know what ship lay off our coast or who its captain may be. I would have to improvise once I reached them.</p>
<p>I stepped out of the rift and felt warm air eddy against my back as the way closed behind me. I was so focused on the empty stretch of water between me and the ship and the wind that I almost didn’t see them. But one of them moved, and I saw a glint of light off of obsidian and turned to meet the eyes of a hunter, her cheeks and brow streaked with white pigment, marking her as one of the Gaís Rad. She sat beside a young man on the slope of a hill across the harbor. They both wore tunics of undyed leather that were only lightly armored. Tracker’s tunics. Had they somehow followed me here? Had they known I would come to this spot—or was this meeting purely by chance?</p>
<p>Constantin felt my heart pounding, and I stiffened when his voice broke into my thoughts. <i>Lily? Are you safe?</i></p>
<p><i>Yes,</i> I answered. <i>I think so.</i> The pair hadn’t moved; they only sat and watched me with their dark eyes.</p>
<p>I wanted to try to speak with them. But this might be my only chance to reach a ship. And Constantin would be here in a moment; he was opening his eyes and getting to his feet, already turning toward the south and New Sérène.</p>
<p>I took one step toward the water, and another, remembering the gull and how it had felt to fly, and then the wind lifted me. I pointed my head toward the ship and beat my wings against the air. The wide expanse of the water spread all around me. The light rippled across its surface; the shadow of the gull’s body cut through it like I cut through the sky. The ship was closer now. Sailors busied themselves on deck, but most of the sails, except the two largest, were furled. Two figures stood at the starboard rail. One wore a long red coat and held a looking glass up under a wide-brimmed tricorn. The captain. I couldn’t see his face.</p>
<p><i>Lily!</i> Constantin’s voice sounded like a crack of thunder in my mind, sharp and imperious. <i>Stop! What are you doing?</i></p>
<p>I urged more speed from my wings, until the muscles of my breast started to burn. Behind me, Constantin’s own wings beat heavily at the air. He had become a <i>Nádaig meneimen</i> with wings twice as wide as a man was tall. His face was impassive, alien, but his thoughts roiled with anger and fear.</p>
<p>The sailors had seen him. The captain turned, and shouts rose from the deck as orders were given and answered. A stream of sailors began to climb the rigging.</p>
<p>Then, between one moment and the next, without warning, something changed. I felt the difference without knowing what it was, a loss, a chill. My body changed back into my human body, heavy and featherless, with bones that were solid instead of hollow, and I fell out of the sky.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>Water closed over my head. I struggled against it and still sank, and the light grew distant and dim. The darkness below me, the cold, the muffling silence mirrored Tír Anemen. I couldn’t feel the spirit world to open a doorway and save myself. I couldn’t change. The pressure in my chest grew the more I struggled; a moment more and I would have to breathe, though the water would rush in and choke me.</p>
<p>In the distance, a white plume shot through the water and resolved itself into the shape of a person swimming toward me with strong, smooth strokes. I saw a face, a woman’s face, framed by a cloud of long, wavy hair and the billow of her white shirt. Then the pain forced my mouth open.</p>
<p>The woman clapped her hand over my mouth and, unthinking, I struggled against that too, scrabbling at her arm and shoulder until she pinned me to her with her other arm and began to kick for the surface.</p>
<p>A moment later, I came to lying on the rough boards that pressed against my hip and arm. A spate of coughing made me curl in on myself, and my chest and throat burned as the sea water I’d breathed came up. When I could finally drag in a breath, I felt the hand on my shoulder. The woman who dove into the sea to save me knelt by my head, her hand on my shoulder to steady me. Water streamed from her hair and sodden clothing.</p>
<p>She smiled down at me and laughed under her breath. Her tattoos, which I’d not noticed in the water, nearly covered her face and neck. Journey marks meandered across her cheeks and down her neck, and she had been awarded the banners across her cheekbones for meritorious service to the Nauts, as Vasco had been after we’d determined what had happened to the Oriflamme. Another tattoo crossed the bridge of her nose between her eyes. I’d only seen similar tattoos on Admiral Cabral. Vasco had never told me what they meant.</p>
<p>Taking her hand away, she gathered the ruddy mass of her hair over one shoulder and twisted it to wring out more water, and said, “No breath of life for you, then. More’s the pity for me.”</p>
<p>Laughter greeted the words. I glanced away from her to see boots gathered around us, at least ten men and probably more in the rigging. We were on the deck of the ship. I wanted nothing more than to curl into a ball until every breath no longer felt like a stab to my chest and the weakness in my limbs passed—but what if the weakness did not pass? Something was wrong. My powers had fled.</p>
<p>And where was Constantin? I had made it to the ship, but how would I get back to him now that I couldn’t fly? How would I get back, when I swam as well as a stone?</p>
<p>My powers would have been my shield while I spoke to the captain. They would have carried me back to the island. Without them I felt like a prisoner, though the Nauts had made no move to take me captive. Would they, if they knew who I was? Were they here searching for us?</p>
<p>I started to push myself up to sit, then stopped when I felt the chill on my skin. I was entirely naked and on view for everyone aboard the ship.</p>
<p>The woman reached out and caught me under one arm as I started to shake. “Steady,” she said, studying me with a furrowed brow as I covered my chest with my other arm. She turned to look over her shoulder. “Barto—coat,” she said, and a man draped the long, red captain’s coat with its leather collar over her waiting arm. Her coat. My rescuer was the captain of the ship.</p>
<p>She took her other hand from my arm to shake out the coat and then sweep it over my shoulders. “As much as you lads might think you’ve earned the show,” she said, raising her voice so the others could hear, “she is our guest for the moment.”</p>
<p>A few of the men chuckled or groaned good-naturedly as she took me by the arms and pulled me to my feet. When my legs started to buckle, she wrapped her arm around my waist and held me against her side. For the moment, I was happy to let her. I wasn’t sure I trusted my legs, and if I seemed overcome by my brush with death, if I was pale and trembling, perhaps that would put off any questions. I didn’t let myself think that I might be overcome in truth.</p>
<p>A man spoke from the port-side rigging. “We should toss her back, Commander. Bringing island magic aboard ship ‘s askin’ for trouble.”</p>
<p>“I won’t toss her overboard to die. And I doubt she’ll attack the people who rescued her from the water. Let’s assume that we are all decent people.”</p>
<p>“Is she, though?” the man asked. “A person? A moment ago she was a bird in the sky. We all saw it. –Respectfully, Commander.”</p>
<p>I felt the captain take a breath and saw her smile out of the corner of my eye before she answered. “I can assure you she’s a woman, Jac,” she said, her tone light. Several of the men laughed, and I felt the tension that had been building break as Jac nodded, fighting a smile that tugged at his lips.</p>
<p>A grey-bearded sailor with a barrel chest and strong arms nodded in our direction, raising his brows. “And her friends?” he asked.</p>
<p>Friends? The captain twisted to look over her shoulder, and I craned my neck to see past her. Constantin, still wearing the <i>Nádaig</i>’s shape, hung in the air just offshore, his wings beating hard enough to blow foam off the waves. He held a spear in one claw-tipped hand. Behind him, another <i>Nádaig meneimen</i> and a pair of immense <i>Nádaig magamen</i> had appeared on the rocks at the mouth of the harbor. Constantin had called them to him. Perhaps he was calling others. I didn’t know whether to hope that he would attack the ship or that he would wait for me to do…something. No scrap of a plan had come to me yet.</p>
<p>I couldn’t speak to him. At this distance and while he wore the <i>Nádaig</i>’s face, I couldn’t even guess at what he was thinking. He must be furious and, in the midst of that, frightened.</p>
<p>“I’m not sure ‘friends’ is the right word. That one was chasing her earlier,” the captain said, nodding toward Constantin. She looked down at me, and I forced myself to look away from Constantin. “Perhaps you can unravel the story for me?”</p>
<p>When I looked down and didn’t answer, she moved her hand to my arm and took a step away. “Barto, please take her to my cabin and see that she’s comfortable.” Barto took my arm, and the captain walked away, already calling out commands. “Set a watch at the rail. And ready us for speed—we may need to put some distance between us and the winged ones.”</p>
<p>Barto put a rough hand under my arm. I found myself needing to lean on him as he walked us across the deck. My legs didn’t feel like my own; they were heavy and wobbled like loose table legs.</p>
<p>“Come on, lass,” Barto said, opening a hatch. “Let’s get you sorted.”</p>
<p>I tried to turn, to get a last glimpse of the island and Constantin, but before I could, Barto had helped me onto the steep stair with one hand on my back and followed behind me, down into the darkness below deck. As he closed the hatch, I heard a high, thin cry, like the keening of a hawk, over the wind.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you to everyone who has left kudos recently!</p>
<p>Chapters with a lot of narration, where we're just trying to get from Point A to Point B, are the hardest for me to write. I've gotten around that in other chapters by having Constantin do something ridiculous; this time I almost turned him into a tree. Because that's what I do to characters that I love. :P</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Terms, part I</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <i>Lily</i>
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</div><p>Barto left me in the captain’s quarters and closed the door behind me. He didn’t leave afterward. The boards creaked as he shifted his weight just outside the door, and he cleared his throat with a raspy cough. Barto, at least, did not trust me, and I could not blame him for that. At least with the closed door between us, I had a measure of privacy.</p>
<p>I had been in Vasco’s quarters briefly several times during the voyage to the island, and I knew from wandering the Sea Horse during the weeks we were at sea that the captain’s quarters were the largest on the ship. This room, however, felt nothing but snug. Every corner was crammed with objects that were beautiful or simply odd, all illuminated by the light from rows of windows that ran the length of three of the walls. A device similar to those I’d seen in the Nauts’ warehouse in San Matheus lay in pieces atop an enameled iron chest from the Bridge Alliance. One wall alongside the door was occupied by a map painted on fine, smooth leather, but the orientation of the map was wrong. South was up and north was down. When I looked closer, I saw that the names of the nations and cities on the continent, the Nauts’ island, Jardim do Mar, and Teer Fradee were right-side up; the map had been painted this way. On the opposite side, masks from the island hung on the wall—the boar spirit, the deer spirit, the crane—and beneath them, two carved bone flutes from Vignamri rested in a gilded blue vase that might have come from the Prince’s palace in Sérène.</p>
<p>On the back wall, above the captain’s ornately carved wooden desk and the windows, the name of the ship was painted in gold in an elegant script. The Trident. I knew the name, but little more than that. Sir de Courcillon’s lessons on the Nauts had primarily covered the raft of treaties between their faction and the Congregation and the views of their several admirals. On the island, I had dealt mostly with Admiral Cabral and very little with the captains of individual ships. But if I remembered rightly, the Trident had been stationed in San Matheus. A broadsword, polished and sharpened to a deadly edge, rested in brackets on the wall above the ship’s name. The captain was a tall woman and broad-shouldered, but it seemed unlikely she would use such a weapon, much less aboard a ship. It must be an object of interest for her for some reason, like all the others.</p>
<p>The captain’s narrow bed was covered with a blanket of red silk brocade. It and the captain’s desk were the only tidy things in the room, though a bundle of bright-colored sashes had been tossed across the foot of the bed. I took one of them, the most muted one, a violet so dark it might be mistaken for black, and once I had buttoned the coat, I wrapped the sash around my waist. I had grown used to the feeling of the air on my skin, the feeling of flames rippling across my body. Even when I was in my body, there was nothing between me and the world.</p>
<p>But on the island, I did not feel vulnerable. The coat belled out around my hips, and I was keenly aware that I wore nothing underneath. My skin felt thin and exposed without my fire. With the sash tight around my waist, some of the tension in my shoulders and back eased.</p>
<p>I had just tucked in the end of the sash when Barto spoke outside the door.</p>
<p>“Commander.” I stilled my hands so I could listen better. She was a commander then, one rank higher than a captain. She would have several ships, not just the Trident.</p>
<p>“How is she, Barto?”</p>
<p>“Quiet so far,” Barto answered. “D’you want me to keep guard?”</p>
<p>The commander laughed. “Are you going to deny me the opportunity to be murdered by a beautiful woman?”</p>
<p>“Aye, if it comes to that.”</p>
<p>“No,” she said, “I’d rather have you in command on deck. I don’t like the look of those guardians. The winged ones haven’t made a move toward us yet, but I wouldn’t bet we’re out of their reach.”</p>
<p>Barto answered at once. “Aye, Commander.” His footsteps moved off down the passageway as the commander opened the door.</p>
<p>She glanced at me, then down at the sash I wore, and chuckled to herself. She tossed her hat on the bed beside me, then bent down to open the trunk at the foot of the bed. “If you don’t mind,” she said, “I’d rather not have a conversation in wet pants.”</p>
<p>She turned toward the corner and pulled her wet shirt over her head in one motion, and before her hair fell to cover them, I caught a glimpse of the tattoos that covered her bare shoulders and wrapped around her ribs. They were etched with bolder lines and colors than the tattoos on her face. Vasco had told me that the stories Nauts told on their bodies were more personal than the official achievements that decorated their faces; I had seen the tattoos on his chest and back on many occasions when we made camp. <i>No lovers on my skin, if that’s what you’re wondering</i>, he’d said once, when he caught me looking, as bold as any sailor in front of everyone. He’d meant to make me blush, and I had.</p>
<p>Now I couldn’t help wondering if the stylized birds with pointed wings on the commander’s shoulder blades or the creatures with the heads and torsos of women and the bodies of fish represented her lovers. Perhaps she meant me to wonder. Nauts were hardly modest, and she was no exception. I was caught between her desk and bed and the pile of objects at the back of the cabin, so I dropped my gaze to the floor and waited while she put on a new shirt, kicked her trousers and underthings off to join the heap of wet clothing on the floor, and stepped into dry clothes. A moment later, her hands were on my shoulders, and I glanced up to see her smile as she held me still to maneuver around me to the other side of the desk.</p>
<p>Her chair was a tooled leather ottoman that she pulled from under the desk. She sat, drawing one leg up to rest on the ottoman, then leaned her elbows on the desk and looked up at me. “You understand me,” she said. It wasn’t a question. “You reacted when we were talking about the guardians,” she added, as if I might have denied her observation.</p>
<p>So I didn’t. “Yes,” I answered.</p>
<p>Her smile came and went again, and she gestured to the space in front of her desk. “Sit. What is your name?”</p>
<p>There were no chairs in her cabin. My choices of seat were a tall hand drum, a chest half-covered with books, or the desk itself, it seemed. I chose the chest.</p>
<p>I might have given her the name my mother gave me, Rhíenna, and hoped that my imitation of an islander’s accent was passable enough. They would have returned me to shore. I didn’t have to risk anything more. But could I pass up this chance, knowing what it meant for everyone on the continent?</p>
<p>I met her eyes and said, “My name is Lily de Sardet.”</p>
<p>She didn’t move except to raise her brows, but the glimmer of laughter that shone just beneath her expression disappeared.</p>
<p>I had to keep her talking. “And you are?” I prompted.</p>
<p>Her eyes searched my face, and for a moment, I thought she wouldn’t answer. “Commander Brigida Cabral,” she said finally. Her voice had changed completely, becoming hard, business-like. She pushed herself up to sit straight, then reached behind her head to tie the wayward strands of her hair back with a leather cord that she untwined from around her wrist, her eyes on me all the while.</p>
<p>Before I could say anything, she spoke again, “I know your name, of course. My mother sent men with you to die at Dorhadgenedu. …But I never expected to meet the woman herself.”</p>
<p>Brigida Cabral, the daughter of Admiral Cabral. I hadn’t known she had any children. So the commander was sea-born and on the verge of becoming an admiral of the fleet, judging by her tattoos. Now that she’d given me her name, her resemblance to her mother stood out. Though she was at least a foot taller and broader across the shoulders, her nose and lips bore the stamp of the admiral’s features. She must have gotten her chestnut hair and green eyes from her father. She was perhaps five years older than I was, and ambitious—but perhaps not at the cost of all else.</p>
<p>“Why are you here, Commander?” I asked. There was no easy way to sit on the crowded lid of the chest, not when I was completely bare beneath the coat. I couldn’t let myself fidget. I perched there awkwardly, my knees pressed together like a priest’s hands at prayer, my heels crammed against the side of the chest, my back straight. I kept my hands in my lap, my thumb pressed against the scar across my left palm. I tried not to rub at the place where my flame should have been.</p>
<p>“Our clients and allies pay well for news of the island,” she said.</p>
<p>“What news do you bring them?”</p>
<p>“After this voyage? –That the eruption has stopped in New Sérène but the city has been overrun by forest. That the harbor in Hikmet is gone, buried under rock.” She paused, then added, “And I may bring them Lily de Sardet.”</p>
<p>I made myself smile and ask, “How much would they pay for me?”</p>
<p>“Enough gold to buy a decent piece of land in any harbor we chose, I’d imagine. You’ve been named a traitor by every government that had holdings on the island.”</p>
<p>The word struck me less than I had expected, hurt less. Somehow the old world seemed distant, not only physically but in time. My life these past few months had been concerned with other people, my mother’s people, and Constantin. But it would be dangerous to forget just how close the continent lay to Tír Fradí. This ship was proof of that, and I had gone out to meet it.</p>
<p>Even so, I hadn’t forgotten all I’d learned in my time as legate, the careful balancing in a conversation between truth and performance. I shrugged one shoulder. “You could bring me back,” I said carefully, watching her.</p>
<p>That drew a laugh out of her. “But you’re going to tell me why I won’t?” Still smiling, she put her legs over the side of the ottoman and stood. She glanced once at the sword that hung above before moving to the row of windows on the starboard side. They were fine glass, thin and clear. I could see the forested shore and, in the midst of a grove of younger trees, the city wall of New Sérène and some of its ruins.</p>
<p>The captain looked toward the front of the ship to where Constantin and the <i>Nádaig</i> he had called must be, out of my sight. Her smile faded, her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t seem angry or alarmed. She rested her hand on the window casement and paused there. I took it for a good sign; Constantin must still be waiting.</p>
<p>But the ship was still moving. The shoreline was slipping by; soon I wouldn’t be able to see the city. <i>We’re still within sight of shore,</i> I told myself, but we might as well have been on the other side of the sea. Fear clawed its way from my throat to my belly. I had to get back—and not just to save my life. I didn’t want to leave the island, its forests and creatures, its people. Constantin. I didn’t want to leave what our life was becoming.</p>
<p>I needed the commander’s help. And to get it, I’d have to play the game of the <i>renaigse</i> as well as I ever had.</p>
<p>While the commander’s back was turned, I crossed one leg over the other. The edges of the coat fell open, exposing my legs up to the thigh. Once, being in this state of undress outside of the most private situations would have been unimaginable for me, a woman raised to nobility and a legate who represented her prince, but I was no longer that woman, though I could still own her name. I was a spirit of Tír Fradí. I could have any body I chose or no body at all. And following their rules couldn’t give me anything that I wanted. I thought this, and thinking it made me bolder. But there was a hollow pit inside me where my bond with the island had been. If I spared a moment to think that I would never be able to go back to the way I had been, even if I were to return to the island, all my daring would leave me.</p>
<p>“That sword doesn’t look as though it’s entirely for decoration.”</p>
<p>She turned as I spoke, and her eyes took me in as though she saw me for the first time, from the crown of branches on my head to my bare legs. She didn’t look away when she answered. “It wasn’t intended to be. Its last owner was forced to part with it rather suddenly.”</p>
<p>“Who was that?”</p>
<p>“Commander Torsten of the Coin Guard,” she said with a smile that was more like a quick baring of teeth. “He seemed to think my generosity in evacuating him and his men from the island meant he was entitled to my ship. It goes without saying that I disagreed.”</p>
<p>“You appear to have won the argument.”</p>
<p>“I often do win arguments.”</p>
<p>I smiled, meeting her eyes, but I let that statement lie. I didn’t want to argue with her. I wanted the exact opposite, in fact. “Will you indulge me with the story?” I asked. “I’m only sorry that I couldn’t ruin his plans myself. He nearly succeeded in having my cousin, and me, killed.”</p>
<p>She went to the back wall and took the sword down with a hand on the hilt and one on the blade, then she came around the desk and perched herself there with one leg resting on its edge. She let the point of the blade fall to the floor between us, and it gouged the wood, driving up splinters. “It’s impossible to keep secrets aboard ship,” she said, leaning forward, her arm resting atop the crossguard. “Love affairs, mutiny, complaints about the cooking—whisper it and, before long, everyone knows. …The truth of the matter is that Cook overheard Torsten and his men plotting in the early hours one morning and came to me. Torsten made the mistake of shutting his eyes before he acted, and he woke with the blade of his own sword against his throat.”</p>
<p>That same wolfish grin crossed her lips. “Turns out coin isn’t the only thing that can buy a Guard. Torsten’s men were quick to give up his lieutenants in exchange for making it to dry land safe and alive. –Whether they’re still alive…” She trailed off, leaning back and shrugging.</p>
<p>“And Torsten?”</p>
<p>“A short walk and a long drop off the side, somewhere between Teer Fradee and Jardim do Mar, along with his lieutenants. Spit into the sea, and you’re spitting on his grave.” I grimaced slightly before I could stop myself, and she laughed that low chuckle. “Barefoot and bedraggled, but still a fine lady.”</p>
<p>“Why wouldn’t his men still be alive?” I asked. She might only have meant the malichor would have claimed some of them, but perhaps there was more to the story than I knew.</p>
<p>“If they managed to avoid being captured and tried for the coup, there are plenty of other things that will kill a man on the continent. The malichor, the war. –There’s been noise that both the Bridge and Thélème are eyeing the Congregation, supposedly in retaliation for the loss of the island. But whoever takes that prize might have the forces to finally take all.”</p>
<p><i>You’re good for gossip, Commander,</i> I would have said, letting her allusion toward Constantin’s and my part in the events that had caused the colonists to flee the island slide by me, but the ship gave a sudden lurch. Somewhere above me, wood creaked. When I looked out the windows, I could no longer see the city. I forced myself to stay still, leaning on one hand against the top of the chest, while Brigida stood and carried the sword back to its resting place. She stopped by the window again, frowning as she looked out.</p>
<p>“As entertaining as this has been,” she said, straightening and turning to look at me, “I’ll be needed on deck.”</p>
<p>What was Constantin doing? Even as I thought the question, muffled shouts came from above us. Outside the cabin door, another door banged open and footsteps pounded down the stairs.</p>
<p>“Wait,” I said as Brigida started toward the door. Her hand was on the latch, and in my haste to get to the door, I knocked the stack of books on the chest to the floor. I grabbed her arm. “I can help you end this. And save your ship and your men.”</p>
<p>“We aren’t asking to be saved.”</p>
<p>“Commander!” The shout came from just outside the door, accompanied by the woman’s fist drumming on the wood.</p>
<p>“Neither you nor your men have seen anything like this before,” I said softly, keeping my eyes on hers.</p>
<p>She studied me for the space of a breath before she called through the door, “A moment! Take us out of range.” Then she shook off my arm and returned to the window. “Whatever it is, say it quickly.”</p>
<p>“Give me a boat to get back to shore,” I said, and she laughed once. “Take me up to the deck. Let him see you put me on a boat, and he’ll stop.”</p>
<p>“You control the beast?”</p>
<p>“No,” I said. She couldn’t see how the question made me smile wryly. “He’s afraid for me.”</p>
<p>She shook her head. “They’re massive, too heavy to follow us far or quickly. The one aloft has stayed near the shore the entire time I’ve had you here. We’ll be away before they can cripple us.”</p>
<p>“And then you take me to your masters? For the privilege of doing more work in their service?”</p>
<p>She finally turned to face me, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’ll take you to whoever will pay the most for the privilege of executing you.”</p>
<p>I said nothing but looked her in the eye, letting those words stretch into silence. She did not look away, but she wanted to. Her hand closed tighter on her sleeve, and the muscles of her jaw jumped once, as if she might have said something but stopped herself.</p>
<p>I said, “Let me go, and the Nauts could be the only faction welcome on Tír Fradí. You would have sole rights to trade with the clans—potions, remedies, timber and weapons. And art,” I added, nodding toward the bone flutes she kept in the corner. “You would have allies who aren’t tied to any of the nations on the continent.”</p>
<p>“How can you promise any of that?”</p>
<p>“High King Dunncas will listen to me. Not all of the clans will be interested in trade; we both know that. But some, like the Sisaig Cnameis, will see it as key to their own prosperity. They’ll be eager to welcome the Nauts. And once the other clans see the benefit of it, perhaps they will follow.”</p>
<p>It was a gamble. Dunncas wouldn’t want to allow a single ship to land on Tír Fradí so soon after the island had escaped so much destruction at the hands of the colonists. And Derdre would be vehemently against the idea. I might lose whatever respect and friendship I’d earned from her over this. But at the same time, they had to know that history couldn’t be changed. Tír Fradí couldn’t be undiscovered. If the Yecht Fradí wanted to keep their island, they would have to take and defend their place as a nation, not an unclaimed and wild land to be settled and ruled over but a sovereign power to be treated with respect.</p>
<p>The Nauts could be our friends and our shields.</p>
<p>Brigida’s eyes were still on me, but her gaze was far away. I knew the moment she’d decided. Her eyes snapped to mine, and she nodded once, already starting for the door. “I can only promise to take this to the admiral,” she said as she pushed the door open.</p>
<p>I followed her into the passageway. “Thank you, Commander.”</p>
<p>The light was harsh on my eyes when she opened the hatch to the main deck. It hardly seemed to faze her, though. While I was still hiding behind my arm and blinking, Brigida was already striding across the deck, ordering a boat to be lowered and weapons stowed. “Was that a question, sailor?” she barked when some of her men made noises of protest.</p>
<p>“No, Commander!” I heard the shouts and boots pelting across the boards as they ran to obey.</p>
<p>When I could lower my arm and look out over the deck, Brigida stood with Barto beside one of the smaller masts, looking toward the shore. The mast was splintered on one side. The wood had been deeply gouged, but the mast still stood, mostly in one piece. Whatever weapon had done such damage was nowhere to be seen.</p>
<p>She turned and saw me. “Let’s go,” she said, reaching for my arm, “Before your friend decides to put more holes in my ship.”</p>
<p>Constantin still beat his wings offshore, far enough away that I could barely make out his face. He appeared not to be at all fatigued after all this time following the ship. As Brigida escorted me to the rail, he raised his arm and a spear appeared in his hand, its head made of carved obsidian and a red cord tied around its shaft, every detail of it the same as the spears that the <i>Nádaig magamen</i> carried.</p>
<p>At my side, Brigida muttered, “Stop, you ass. She’s here.” But Constantin had not seen me yet. He drew back his arm and threw, at the same time sweeping his wings forward to steady himself in the air.</p>
<p>I caught my breath, Brigida’s hand tensed on my arm, but the spear fell short of us. There was a thump that I felt in the soles of my feet as much as heard, and the wood of the hull below us groaned.</p>
<p>“Above the water line,” Barto called from where he stood looking over the rail several feet away from us.</p>
<p>Brigida nodded tightly, then gave me a push forward. “Let him know you’re here,” she said.</p>
<p>I grabbed the rail, willing him to look at me. I wanted to lean over the edge and shout his name, but then the Nauts would know that Constantin d’Orsay could change into one of the guardians of the island. Caution kept me from giving up all of our secrets so quickly. Instead I raised my hand; if I had to, I’d pull the sash from around my waist and wave it like a flag.</p>
<p>He saw me. He saw me, and he lowered his arm. His wings faltered. He lurched in the air before he could right himself, and when he did, his eyes were fixed on me.</p>
<p>“He’s seen me,” I said over my shoulder.</p>
<p>Brigida nodded to Barto. “Go.”</p>
<p>He hooked a rope ladder to the rail and tossed it over the side, then swung his legs over and began to climb down to the waiting boat.</p>
<p>I watched him for a moment, but I couldn’t put it off any longer. I had been so focused on finding a way back to the island that I hadn’t accomplished what I’d set out to do when I’d flown to the ship. To leave without doing that would mean more time wasted, more lives lost.</p>
<p>“Commander,” I said, and Brigida turned to me, her brows raised.</p>
<p>“Will you tell Vasco—Captain Vasco—that I need to see him?”</p>
<p>“He’ll refuse. He hasn’t set foot aboard a ship since he left Teer Fradee.”</p>
<p>What had kept Vasco from the sea? Had he been injured during the battle? The thought was a painful weight in my chest. “If he does,” I started. I hesitated to continue, but then I said the words anyway. I needed him to come; I didn’t need him to love me. “Tell him that he owes me.”</p>
<p>Brigida huffed a laugh under her breath and shook her head. “You may be glad to have the sea between you,” she said. “I’ll tell him. That’s all I can promise.”</p>
<p>“Thank you.”</p>
<p>Barto called up from the boat. He was ready for me to make my way down. I put my hands on the sash I’d taken from the commander’s bed, to give it back to her, but she stopped me, laughing. “Keep it,” she said. “Did you know it’s tradition among the Nauts for lovers to swap sashes?”</p>
<p>Her grin was wicked. I was painfully aware that the deck had grown quiet enough for her men to overhear; several of them chuckled as heat flushed my cheeks. Once, I might not have had it in me to respond to such a bold jest, but now I raised my chin and said, “Then I’ll keep it in honor of the promises we’ve made to each other.”</p>
<p>That earned me whoops from the sailors and calls of “Quick work, Commander!” and “Kiss her!”. They didn’t know what they were cheering or who, and perhaps they had forgotten the uncanny way I’d arrived aboard their ship. Perhaps their commander’s easy jokes had helped them to forget.</p>
<p>Brigida only winked at me and jerked her chin toward the rail. “Off with you,” she said.</p>
<p>As I climbed carefully down the side of the ship, the spear that had lodged in the hull seemed to waver and lose its form. A moment later, it disappeared entirely. Constantin wasn’t thinking of it any longer. The waiting rowboat rocked beneath me as I stepped off the rope ladder, and once I’d settled myself on the bench across from him, Barto set the oars in the water and began to maneuver us away from the ship.</p>
<p>“See, lass,” Barto said as he bent his back to the oars. “On your way home already.” His tone was light, but he watched me as he rowed. He knew I wasn’t what I seemed. Whether he’d worked out that I was de Sardet, legate of the Congregation, I couldn’t tell. I’d had a reputation on the island before Constantin and I had overthrown <i>en on mil frichtimen</i>, but I wasn’t naive or conceited enough to believe that every person on Tír Fradí knew my name.</p>
<p>Despite whatever questions he had, he was following his commander’s orders. “Thank you, Barto,” I said quietly. He glanced up at me, and his eyes lingered on my face. But a smile tugged at the corner of his lips when he looked away again.</p>
<p>Barto was angling us toward the harbor at New Sérène. The shore to the west of the city was broken and rough; wherever I looked, the waves frothed white as they crashed against the rocks. There weren’t any safe landings that way. Several times when I looked to the shore, I saw faces in the trees, the <i>Nádaig</i>, watching us. As Barto turned us toward the harbor, Constantin flew ahead of us. He looked back over his shoulder often.</p>
<p>Was he trying to talk to me? I couldn’t feel his mind. I couldn’t feel anything but the polished wood of the boat under my hands, the heavy warmth of the coat, the sting of salt spray on the wind. Had I lost my powers irrevocably? If I had, I wouldn’t be returning to the same island I had left. I might live, but I would mourn the loss of my bond every moment.</p>
<p>I hadn’t wanted this power, in the beginning, when Constantin had offered me the knife. But if I had known what the cost would be, would I have gone to meet the ship?
The lives of so many on the continent should carry more weight than my own. I knew that. I could tell myself that. But if it was my hand on the scales… I wrapped my arms around the sash at my waist and stopped trying to not huddle into myself. <i>Constantin.</i></p>
<p>
  <i>Constantin, I need you.</i>
</p>
<p>At first, I thought I was smelling the forest over the salt of the sea, the loamy smell of dark earth and green leaves. But it wasn’t just a smell. I could feel under my skin the creep of sap in the trees and, far below that—beneath everything—the slow pulse of the volcano. When I lifted my hand, flame jumped into the air.</p>
<p>Barto looked at me across the boat when I laughed brokenly. “What’s this?” he asked.</p>
<p>I could only shake my head and give him a trembling smile.</p>
<p>“I don’t like so much water in the boat,” he said gruffly, and I laughed again as I reached up to scrub the tears from my face. White flames rippled along the edges of my coat sleeves, and the air suddenly felt humid and hot as I became colder. The cold was a part of me, and I was part of it. Even here, on the water, Tír Anemen was under my feet.</p>
<p>“This is far enough,” I said, and before Barto could protest, I stood. The coat and sash fell to the bench as the wind picked me up, and in the shape of the gull, I turned toward the island, and home.</p>
<p>When I reached the shore, Constantin was gone.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>A new chapter already--who dis?</p>
<p>No, I haven't been body snatched by someone who writes faster than I do (though that would be helpful). I got a bit of a head start on this chapter over Thanksgiving, and I also discovered that if I shut myself in my husband's office, I can get about 500 words written before breakfast and work. Although both my husband and the cat crashed my writing session three times this morning, so I may actually have to start locking the door...</p>
<p>More notes:</p>
<p>1. Jardim do Mar is a Portuguese island. The name means "sea garden" or "garden of the sea".</p>
<p>2. I listened to a revised love suite, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlVcER-RQCo">"Marry Me"</a>, from <i>Pirates of the Caribbean:  At World's End</i> a lot while I was writing this chapter. This suite has been Lily and Constantin's love theme for me for this story. Basically, Hans Zimmer is a genius.</p>
<p>3. Speaking of pirates, did you realize we've been playing a <a href="https://www.gamespot.com/articles/pirate-rpg-greedfall-will-get-a-ps5-xbox-series-x-update-with-new-content/1100-6484930/">pirate RPG</a> this whole time? (...Really?) But the more important thing is that Spiders is bringing GreedFall to next gen consoles with <a href="https://www.gematsu.com/2020/11/greedfall-coming-to-ps5-xbox-series-with-additional-content">expanded content</a>. So excited for that!</p>
<p>4. Also, kudos to you if you caught the Pirates of the Caribbean Easter egg in this chapter. ;)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Terms, part II</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“What did you bring me?” Dunncas asked in Yecht Fradí, gesturing for me to sit on the mat beside his own in front of the fire in his roundhouse.</p>
<p>I had never bowed to Dunncas in all the times we’d met while I’d been the legate of the Congregation. Protocol didn’t allow for bowing to the clan kings. If I had, the stir it caused would have traveled all the way back to Sérène. At best, I would have been the subject of pointed gossip for weeks; at worst, I would have lost my position and found myself packed aboard the first ship back to the continent.</p>
<p>But that didn’t mean it was easy. Dunncas was the High King, and even before he’d worn the crown of the first high kings, he’d possessed a dignity that I’d rarely encountered. He was the king I’d chosen. I would bow to him more willingly than I had ever bowed to the Prince d’Orsay. But I wasn’t one of his people, not exactly. I wasn’t exactly human.</p>
<p>I would have liked to think that we might be friends, but who wants their friends to drop trouble in their laps?</p>
<p>I sat, crossing my legs, and when he dipped a cup into a pot of water steeped with berries and bitter bark and offered it to me, I took it. I sipped from the cup, using the chance to search for the words in Yecht Fradí. “Mal, I found one of the floating houses of the renaigse off the shore of New Sérène,” I said, looking at him.</p>
<p>He said nothing at first, and his gaze grew distant before he focused on me again. “Go on.”</p>
<p>I might only have told him the agreement I’d made, but that wouldn’t explain how I’d gotten to the ship, or why I’d needed to make an agreement at all. I told him the story from the beginning, but not all of it—not how I had fallen out of the sky and been rescued. I didn’t tell him that I’d become human again. Until I knew what had happened to me, and why it had happened, I couldn’t trust anyone but Constantin with this.</p>
<p>If Constantin would speak to me—but I couldn’t think of that now.</p>
<p>I told Dunncas most of the truth, that I’d spoken with the <i>renaigse</i> commander and learned some of what had happened on the continent since the <i>renaigse</i> left the island and that I had asked for Vasco. I told him that the commander had asked for something in return.</p>
<p>“I offered the Nauts rights to trade with the clans,” I said, switching back to the common tongue. Constantin and I talked in Yecht Fradí almost as often as we talked in our birth language now, but I didn’t know the word for “rights” in the islanders’ tongue, or if they had such a word. “Sole rights, the only rights,” I added. “They understand that not all of the clans will want this, but they are willing to build relationships with each of the clans to have trading partners, <i>carants</i>, who aren’t under the sway of other nations.</p>
<p>“You can make your own terms in return—the number of ships that may land, when. They can help protect Tír Fradí from the nations of the continent. No one can make the crossing except on a Naut ship.”</p>
<p>He lifted his hand from his knee, and I stopped, waiting while he stared toward the fire. I doubted he saw it. Finally he asked, “Is there a way to find peace with the other nations?”</p>
<p>“Perhaps,” I said. “But it will take time. They want the land, and they see the Yecht Fradí as weak.”</p>
<p>Dunncas frowned. “We have to show them that we’re strong,” I said. “That is the only way to have peace on our terms.”</p>
<p>“I think you are right,” he said, considering me. Then he asked, “This agreement was made for one man?”</p>
<p>“No,” I said, putting more certainty than I had into the word, “not entirely. Vasco can help to heal the continent of the malichor. …I need him to come here so I can convince him of that.”</p>
<p>I was surprised when he chuckled. “We both have…convincing to do.” He got his feet under him and stood, then offered me his hand. I let him take hold of my wrist and pull me up, and we started toward the door. “I will call the clans to Dorhadgenedu to discuss this,” he said. He looked at me sidelong. “I do not expect many will be happy. But they will see the wisdom you have shared with me.”</p>
<p>“Except Derdre, perhaps.”</p>
<p>“Except Derdre,” he echoed, smiling. “Derdre wants for us to be strong, de Sardet. We will speak to her in the language of strength.”</p>
<p>“And to Ullan in the language of wealth?”</p>
<p>“That would be wise.”</p>
<p>“Mal,” I started, and when I hesitated, Dunncas stopped and turned to face me. “…My mother gave me a name before I was born. I want to take it in place of my old name.”</p>
<p>“What is your name?”</p>
<p>“Rhíenna.”</p>
<p>“Rhíenna…” he repeated, lingering over the word. How many times would I have to hear it before it truly felt like my name? But the strangeness would pass; I was intimate with far stranger things now, after all.</p>
<p>“Who was your mother?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Arelwin, of the Sisaig Cnameis.” </p>
<p>“Arelwin ad Sisaig Cnameis,” he said patiently in Yecht Fradí. He took a step away to push open the door, then turned back to me. His gaze traveled over my face, and he smiled, though there was something heavy in the expression. “Yes, you are her daughter.”</p>
<p>“Did you know my mother, Dunncas?”</p>
<p>“Oh yes,” he said. Unexpectedly, he laughed. “She would have said we were…” He said several words I did not know in Yecht Fradí, then, “Ones who push against each other.”</p>
<p>“Rivals?”</p>
<p>He nodded. “If that is the word, yes. That is how we were. But she was my <i>carants</i>, like my own <i>sír</i>, sister.</p>
<p>“Come,” he said, while I was still distracted by these new revelations about my mother. He put a gentle hand on my shoulder and led me out. “The day is running.”</p>
<p>When we stepped out of Dunncas’s roundhouse, the sun was shining through the leaves of the great tree that shaded Vigyigidaw’s central clearing and shared fire. The lower part of the village was in shadow, and soon the light would leave the hill that Dunncas’s house stood upon. To the south, a column of clouds billowed up, white near the top but a heavy, brooding gray farther down; the rest of the sky was streaked with the high, wispy clouds that we called mare’s tails back on the continent.</p>
<p>The clouds were over New Sérène. Constantin was there.</p>
<p>If I’d had any doubts that he was furious with me after he’d left me on the shore and I’d returned to Vigyigidaw to find him missing, the storm would have erased them.</p>
<p>“That is not a winter storm,” Dunncas said next to me.</p>
<p>I shook my head. I couldn’t feel Constantin; he was keeping himself apart from me. But, almost instinctively, I knew how the anger was storming through him. He was taking that energy and throwing it up into the sky.</p>
<p>Dunncas’s hand closed on my shoulder, and I came back to myself. “Should you be here?” he asked. His voice was mild, as always, but there was a pointedness to the question. We both knew the answer.</p>
<p>“I thought I might wait for better weather,” I said, my eyes on the clouds.</p>
<p>“To these eyes, it seems as though you make the weather.” He patted me on the shoulder once. “Hm?” When I looked at him, for a moment I might have been looking at Sir de Courcillon. Dunncas shared a serenity of spirit with my old professor. I shouldn’t have needed that to give me the courage to go, but I did. Constantin was right to be angry. I had gone against his wishes, and I had done it without telling him.</p>
<p>I nodded and managed a smile for him. “May the grass be soft under your feet,” Dunncas said in farewell. Already I could feel his heartbeat as I let go of my body and became a part of everything. When I was as vast as the island and as small as a blade of grass, I felt the pull of Constantin’s anger. It bent the currents of the air and made creatures pause mid-step to listen to the rumble of thunder. And deep in the heart of the island, the volcano roiled.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>The grass and stones in Orsay Square were littered with green leaves that had been battered from the trees by the downpour. I came back to my body in the middle of it, the rain stinging on my skin, and thought that my fires would be doused. But when I looked down at myself, the flames were still burning steadily, unruffled.</p>
<p>I half expected Constantin to be here, where he’d spent hours growing a forest from the cobblestones. But though the trees hadn’t been spared his anger, there was no sign of him. Before I could decide which part of the city to search next, I saw the door.</p>
<p>The governor’s palace stood in a slump in front of me, its mortar cracked and trees growing from the slopes of its collapsed roof to drape their crowns over its walls. When we first visited the city after the eruption, the palace doors had been blackened and had fallen open, off their hinges. Now they were closed, the wood and the handles perfect and gleaming set in the wreckage of the stone walls. If I hadn’t known what was waiting for me, they would have seemed welcoming.</p>
<p>I couldn’t put it off any longer. The only way to end the storm was to go through it.</p>
<p>The door opened on silent hinges to reveal the lower hall of the governor’s palace, and when I closed it behind me, I was folded into an eerie quiet. The marble floor shone. The walls were hung with paintings and punctuated with closed doors that led to the administrative offices of the government. Almost every detail was the way I remembered it—but there were no servants, no sounds of conversation or footsteps from behind the closed doors.</p>
<p>I stood for a moment with my hand on the door handle, until I felt a sudden weight on my shoulders and the warmth and rub of clothing on my skin. I was wearing my coat and cuirass, with my pistol and saber tucked into the sash at my waist. I wore my boots and trousers and tricorn hat, every stitch of the clothes familiar, and every bit of it more confining than it had ever felt when this had been my daily uniform. My hat…I reached up and ran my fingers through the wispy ends of my hair at the nape of my neck. My braids were gone. And the hat sat flat against my head; my branches were gone as well. This was one of Constantin’s illusions, along with the palace. He knew I was here.</p>
<p><i>Constantin?</i> I tried, and got no answer in return. He was here, but I still couldn’t feel him.</p>
<p>I let go of the handle and started for the grand staircase, my footsteps echoing in the quiet hall. He had recreated even the details of the paintings. When I drew closer to them, I could see the individual brushstrokes where the artist had painted sunlight on rocks or golden blades of grass. But the illusion ended at the walls and windows of the palace. Outside the window on the landing there was nothing, a formless white void beyond the glass that I forgot about as soon as I looked away from it. I could only keep looking at it by thinking of it every moment, as if the void had some power to fog my mind, make me forget. Was this another world, like Tír Anemen, that Constantin could control? Was I in the palace, or was I still standing outside in the rain, lost in my mind?</p>
<p>The doors to the receiving hall waited at the top of the staircase. I kept my hand on the rail as I went up. The cool metal on my skin said that this place was real, even if I half expected to fall through the stairs.</p>
<p>There were no guards to open the doors for me, and the sound of the handle turning and the catch releasing seemed loud in the quiet space. When I slipped through, I found the receiving hall empty as well, except for one person.</p>
<p>Constantin stood with his back toward me at the foot of the dais, one foot raised on the stair. He wore his blue coat with the high collar; the edge of the collar mussed his blonde hair. His branches were gone as well. He rocked on his feet slightly, forward and back, and his hands were clasped behind him, though the fingers of his right hand opened and closed, tapping a rhythm on his palm. His shoulders were high and hunched.</p>
<p>He didn’t turn or acknowledge me, so I forced myself to leave the doorway and walk to the dais, as I’d done so many times when Constantin had been governor and I had been his legate. I’d felt dread often enough in this room, but the cause of it had always been the possibility that I might not find him here, not that I had.</p>
<p>When I was halfway across the hall, he spoke. “Every detail of this chair is perfect,” he said, still with his back toward me. “I try to imagine it on fire or ripped to shreds, and nothing changes. It’s exactly the way I remember it. …So I’ll have to learn how to set fire to a memory.”</p>
<p>I stopped about five feet from the edge of the dais and waited, not speaking. Finally, he blew out a breath, stepped onto the dais, and turned to face me. There was a flicker at the edges of my vision. For the briefest moment, my companions stood on either side of me, Vasco, Síora, Petrus, and Aphra. I saw a glint of polished armor to the side of the dais. Kurt. Then, before they were truly solid, they were gone.</p>
<p>For a moment, we only looked at each other.</p>
<p>“Is this how you see me, still?” he asked.</p>
<p>As he’d returned me to my former appearance, he’d done the same to himself. The governor of New Sérène, the son of the merchant prince, stood on the dais, tall and thin, his face pale and his cheeks hollow. There were shadows under his eyes. He stared at me accusingly.</p>
<p>“No,” I said, quietly.</p>
<p>“Or this?” he demanded.</p>
<p>I couldn’t see any change in him at first. Then, as I watched, the black veins of the malichor appeared from under his collar and cuffs and crept up his neck and along his hands until his skin was blackened and rough, until he looked at me out of milky white eyes. It was only an illusion. But still my heart twisted in my chest.</p>
<p>“<i>No</i>. Constantin—” I reached out to him with my mind, but he cut me off with a shake of his head. He still held his mind back from me; I couldn’t feel anything from him.</p>
<p>“Why did you do it?”</p>
<p>“To save them from that,” I said, gesturing toward his face.</p>
<p>He opened his mouth, then closed it and shot me a glare instead before he turned and strode off the dais. As he went to the window, his shape changed. His shoulders grew broader; the muscles of his back and arms filled out his coat. A tangle of branches grew from the top of his head. He paused at the window, looking out at the nothingness, and as he did, New Sérène appeared out of the white void, the city lit by a remembered sun. Then his hands closed into fists, and he turned back to find me still in the center of the room.</p>
<p>“They’re our enemies, Lily. Let them save themselves. And if they can’t—” He pressed his lips together and shrugged, pitiless.</p>
<p>“They can’t save themselves if they don’t know how.”</p>
<p>“Why is that any concern of yours?” he burst out, leaning toward me, spreading his arms wide. “Gods and devils, Lily—I thought you were going to die. You could have drowned. They could have taken you.”</p>
<p>All of that was true. And I might still be on the ship if Constantin hadn’t attacked them when he did. The commander would have been able to take all the time she wanted to consider my offer; she might have taken me to Jardim do Mar to let me make that offer to the admirals in person, whether I wanted it or not. She might have let me think she was considering it and taken me to the continent instead.</p>
<p>“Constantin, I know,” I said quietly. He frowned at me, though some of the tension went out of his shoulders. “I might not have made it back without you.”</p>
<p>This time when he spoke his voice was rough, “If you’d just listened to me, none of it would have happened.”</p>
<p>None of it—no alliance, no chance that word of the cure for the malichor would reach the continent. But I wouldn’t say any of that, not now while he was thinking that he’d almost lost me to an idiotic adventure.</p>
<p>Out of habit I thought of all the mad ideas he’d had that I’d attempted to talk him out of and was glad that he wasn’t in my mind after all. Truthfully, he wasn’t that person now.</p>
<p>The silence between us grew strained while Constantin stared at me, waiting. I took a breath, and then I said the only thing that might pull him out of his anger. “I want to do this with you.”</p>
<p>It took him by surprise. “What?” he asked.</p>
<p>I went to meet him at the window. “I want—” I started, then tried again. “While I was on the ship, I realized I don’t want to lose this life. With you. …You’ve been telling me to see the island for what it could be. I think I do, now.” I tried to smile at him. “Finally.”</p>
<p>He studied me, sighing out a pent breath. His shoulders dropped, and the furrows in his brow eased. He reached for me, to trail his fingers along my neck and cheek, but when I reached up to take his hand, he took his hand back and turned away to walk toward the dais. He took the stairs in one step and slid onto the throne, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. He looked down at his clasped hands, and I waited by the window until he looked up at me.</p>
<p>“Do you mean that?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Mean what exactly?” I replied, as I went to stand in front of him. Constantin sat on his throne while I stood to report—we wore our old costumes, posed in our old positions, though nothing else was the same. Why was he doing this?</p>
<p>“That you’re in this. <i>With</i> me. –That you’re committed.”</p>
<p>“Constantin, I want to see what you see. I want it to be real. …I want to be with you, for as long as we can be together.</p>
<p>“Even when you’re being frustrating,” I added. He huffed a laugh, but he didn’t smile.</p>
<p>“Let’s not forget who it was who ran—<i>flew</i>—away on a whim to make herself a captive.”</p>
<p>“To be fair, neither one of us could have known that I would lose my powers.”</p>
<p>“Is that what happened?” he asked, studying my face.</p>
<p>I nodded. “There was a point over the water… When I crossed it, I became human again. It happened so quickly, I wasn’t sure what had caused it at first. …But when Barto was rowing me back, my powers returned when we neared the island. I could feel the volcano again, through the bond.”</p>
<p>Constantin’s gaze shifted away from me. He stared off toward the far end of the hall. “The bond breaks if we go too far from the volcano,” he said.</p>
<p>“It’s only a guess, but that’s how it felt.”</p>
<p>He met my eyes again. “The Gaís Rad saw the whole thing.”</p>
<p>I shivered in my warm clothes. The hunters. I hadn’t thought of them since I’d left the shore.</p>
<p>“I saw them as I was coming back, after they’d put you on the boat. They slipped away before—” He stopped himself, frowning, but I knew what he would have said. Before he could kill them.</p>
<p>It wasn’t a choice I wanted either of us to have to make, but did we have a choice at all? “Eseld and Síora will know now.”</p>
<p>Constantin looked down again at his hands and nodded. His heel started a restless drumming on the dais.</p>
<p>There had been times when I’d wanted to pace in this room, but always there had been other people present and appearances to keep up. Now that we were well and truly alone, I let my feet carry me to the bookshelves that lined the interior wall. Even the books were finely detailed in Constantin’s memory. The shelves were full of leather-bound volumes, their titles stamped in gold, and unmarked journals tied closed with leather cords. There were books here that I’d never noticed before, but when I pulled one down and opened it, the pages were empty, and my gaze slid away from them the way it had when I’d looked at the void outside the window. Constantin had never read this one; the words weren’t in his memory.</p>
<p>When I replaced the book and turned toward him, he was watching me. “We could watch the village,” I said carefully. Constantin would want the threat dealt with, even if it meant killing all of Síora’s clan, but if I could convince him to wait, and watch, perhaps we could find another way to end this without more violence. I wouldn’t be responsible for Síora’s death. I may have lost my companions, but I wouldn’t let another one die. Not if there was another choice. “We would know if they meant to act on what they saw,” I said. “I could take the shape of an animal—a fox, something they wouldn’t think to question, and—”</p>
<p>“No,” Constantin said, cutting me off, shaking his head.</p>
<p>“Constantin—”</p>
<p>“I said no.” He sat back. That stiffness was in his shoulders again, and he looked at me, his eyes hard.</p>
<p>I raised my chin, but before I could say anything else, he continued, “You won’t put yourself at risk again. –You do this all the time, Lily. You throw yourself into every situation you come across, come what may. …You have no idea how many stories I heard after the fact, how many times I wanted to call you back and keep you here.”</p>
<p>He sighed at the look on my face, then stood and came toward me, until we stood close enough to touch and I had to look away from him. “If you meant what you said about being with me, then promise that you’ll ask me before you fly off into danger. I want you to think of me. –Not to worry about me. Not after you put yourself at risk. Before.”</p>
<p>We’d had this argument before—before we’d ever left for Tír Fradí, after the first time I’d nearly died in service of the Congregation. In Constantin’s service. I thought I would be ready if he ever brought up the topic of my safety again. In the months I’d served as Constantin’s legate, I had more experience, in diplomacy and in combat; I had my companions with me to watch my back. And, in the end, even if Constantin protested, even if Petrus wrote regularly to Sir de Courcillon to update him on my work and my health, there was little they could do to rein me in when they were in New Sérène and I was traveling far beyond the walls of the city. I’d had more freedom than I’d ever dreamed possible. With the exception of the odd order from Constantin, I’d ruled myself almost entirely.</p>
<p>But that had been before we’d bound ourselves together to the volcano, before Constantin had been the one at my side in battle. Before I’d felt him shaking under my hand when I’d been injured.</p>
<p>With the backs of his fingers, Constantin tilted my chin up until I met his eyes. “Promise me, Lily,” he repeated, softly.</p>
<p>He let our minds join then, and I felt how his anger and the fear that fueled it had scalded him until there was nothing left but a kind of empty weariness. And resolve. He wasn’t going to end this until he’d gotten what he wanted from me.</p>
<p>I looked down, nodded against his hand. “I promise.”</p>
<p>“To…?”</p>
<p>The word pricked at me, and I looked back up at him to see a wry smile tugging at the corner of his lips, though his eyes were still intent on my face. He was fully aware that he was prodding at my temper. But he would make me say it anyway. “I promise to ask you before I put myself in danger,” I said.</p>
<p>Even as I said the words, I wasn’t sure it was a promise I could keep. If we disagreed on something that I knew to be right, if he told me no—</p>
<p>He knew my thoughts as soon as they came to me. “Together, Lily,” he said, serious again. “We do this together or not at all.”</p>
<p>When I nodded again, he closed the distance between us and gathered me up against his chest. One of his hands was on my waist, the other on my shoulder, and he bent his head close to mine. He held me so tightly that I couldn’t draw a full breath, but I didn’t ask him to let me go. I held him, too, and leaned into the strength of his arms, the heat of him.</p>
<p>“You do realize how much we’re going to argue,” I said into his coat and heard and felt him laugh.</p>
<p>“I had thought of that. I’m willing to throw myself into the breach,” he said wryly.</p>
<p>He might have said something else, but he let it go. Instead, he reached up to bury his fingers in my hair at the nape of my neck and turned his head to press a kiss to my cheek.</p>
<p><i>What are we going to do about the Gaís Rad?</i> he asked in my mind.</p>
<p>It was a question for which I didn’t have an answer. I shook my head, the embroidery of his coat rough on my skin. <i>I won’t ask anyone else to watch them.</i> There was too much risk in it. Síora wouldn’t kill spies if they were discovered, I was sure of that. But Eseld might.</p>
<p><i>Too much risk for others, but not for yourself</i>, Constantin said. My own thoughts had caught me out. I might have argued that I couldn’t die, while they could. But that wasn’t entirely true, not anymore.</p>
<p>Perhaps only the dead couldn’t die.</p>
<p>“Kurt?” Constantin asked, surprised. He leaned away to look down at me. “Why are you thinking of him?”</p>
<p>I hadn’t told him yet. I hesitated to answer but, if I was going to do this, Constantin had to know. “His ghost is here, in New Sérène,” I said, “I found him when I crossed over to Tír Anemen, and the other guards who were killed that day.”</p>
<p>Constantin let me go and took a step back to look at me while he made the connection between the way I’d looked when I’d returned from the land of spirits, the way I’d kept him out of my thoughts, and who I’d seen there. “He’s still there?” he asked. “I thought you meant to return them all…”</p>
<p>“He wouldn’t let me.”</p>
<p>“You want to ask him to watch Vedrhais. A traitor,” he said.</p>
<p>I looked away from his frown, wrapping my arms across my chest. Truthfully, I felt a chill colder than winter at the thought of talking with Kurt again, but what other option was there? We needed a way to stop the Gaís Rad without killing them. Without more information, we had nothing. “He regrets what he did,” I said and tried to believe it. “He said he would follow my orders.”</p>
<p>Constantin only looked at me and said nothing until I met his eyes. Then he asked, “Are you sure?”</p>
<p>No. Yes. I nodded, and the receiving hall dissolved around us. The air suddenly was cool and humid on my skin. The weight of my clothing was gone, and white fire cast wavering shadows on the wall and broken doors in front of me. Constantin stood beside me in his leather tunic on the wet stones outside of the palace. Above us, the sky was clearing.</p>
<p>“He can’t hurt you?” Constantin asked.</p>
<p>“No,” I said, shaking my head. Not physically, in any case.</p>
<p>Constantin frowned, but he didn’t stop me when I opened the way to Tír Anemen. He stepped up beside me and narrowed his eyes, peering into the dark. For a moment, I thought he might try to go with me, but then he shuddered. “How do you stand that cold?” he asked, moving away from the rift to stand in a patch of sunlight.</p>
<p>I lifted my hands and let the cold air weave through my fingers. “It feels like a part of me,” I said. I stepped through, barefoot beneath the dark sky, and turned to give him a smile as the way closed behind me.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Fleet Foxes' gorgeous new song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2E2DpWO3-Y">"Can I Believe You?"</a> wasn't my original inspiration for this chapter, but it was definitely my mood music while I was writing it. This one is going on my list of the best things to come out of 2020.</p>
<p>Happy holidays, everyone! I hope you and all your loved ones are safe, happy, and healthy.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Two Truths and a Lie</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <i>Lily</i>
  </p>
</div><p>I knew what the silence was like now. It was like the silence underwater, a weight that pressed in on me. It muffled and killed sound. But here, it was almost comforting; all the noise of the living world had given way to quiet and the ghost fires, the soul of all things and the essence at the heart of everything.</p><p>Constantin vanished after I went through the rift, and I started down the stairs and through the wooded square. I could feel the cold, as I always had, but I thrilled to it. As soon as I crossed over and the cold air flooded my lungs, I felt truly awake and alive, as if the living world was a dream, a fabrication like Constantin’s remembered palace, and Tír Anemen was reality.</p><p>This time when I reached the alley, because I expected to see them, I caught the distortions in the air where they stood, the way the light wavered as it passed through them before reaching the stone wall. Most of them stood in pairs, facing each other as if they had been sparring. But they held their weapons loosely, their shoulders slumped, and looked past each other or at the ground. Even Kurt. He stood off to the side, arms crossed over his chest, his feet braced wide apart. It was how he usually stood when he watched Constantin and me spar in the courtyard back in Sérène. But I had never seen this look on his face before. When I came closer, I could see his empty eyes, his slack expression.</p><p>“Kurt.” I said his name before I thought about it, and he startled.</p><p>“My lady.” He took a step back and stared at me as if this was the first time he was seeing me. But he gathered himself quickly. “Coin Guard,” he commanded, and I heard muttered exclamations on all sides as the soldiers around me came alive. Ghostly forms streamed past me to line themselves up behind Kurt and present their arms.</p><p>“My lady,” Kurt said again, glancing at me when I looked at him, then looking away. When I had first seen him here, I hadn’t been able to look at him, not really. Now, while they waited, I studied him. His face was as I remembered it, his eyes narrow and sharp, a scar cutting across one of his brows, another across the bridge of his nose, and the one across his mouth that had always seemed to make him more fierce. He wore the brigandine he’d worn the day he died. Even though he’d been a fixture in my life almost since I’d been a child, I might have forgotten the way his face looked, if the memory of him standing across from me in the hall, my pistol in his hand, wasn’t seared in my mind.</p><p>“Have you thought about what I said, Kurt?” I asked. “Do you still want to stay here?”</p><p>He shifted his feet wider, clasping his hands behind his back. Then he looked at me again, his eyes finding mine. “Do you have orders for us?”</p><p>I hadn’t been fair. I knew he would catch the implication of my question—that I wanted him to stay, that there was a reason for it. I wasn’t truly giving him a choice, if he was determined to make amends for what he’d done, or rise above the dishonor of his death. I knew he was determined to stay, though I couldn’t be sure of his motivations. And that only added to my unease at using him this way.</p><p>But I would still do it. There wasn’t another option that was acceptable to Constantin and me both.</p><p>“Yes,” I said. “I need you and your men to watch Vedrhais.”</p><p>“…That’s Síora’s village. Why?”</p><p>I hadn’t expected the question from him, but I should have. Síora and I had been on friendly terms when he’d died; he had no way of knowing what had happened after. And Kurt seemed to have a soft spot for her. He’d been attentive to her feelings almost from the day she joined our party. He’d called her “little flower.” The first time I heard him say it, I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing in astonishment. At the time, I thought he was smitten with her.</p><p>Would he understand what I was trying to do?</p><p>“Constantin and I think the Gaís Rad may try to attack us,” I said, watching for his reaction. “We want to keep that from happening.”</p><p>Kurt frowned down at my feet. Finally, he nodded. “On one condition,” he said, meeting my eyes again. “You tell me what happened—all of it.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>The front wall of the house still stood, though the door had fallen in. I stepped carefully across it to go inside, and Kurt passed me, passing through my shoulder and side, and stopped in the doorway to the parlor.</p><p>My first instinct when Kurt had given me his condition had been to refuse. He didn’t deserve the chance to judge me, after what he’d done. And telling him what Constantin and I had discovered just before Kurt had marched into the hall with a row of guards at his back to murder us both would make that day worse, somehow, even though it was long behind us. I didn’t want to see the look on his face, once he knew.</p><p>But I had nodded. “Not here,” I said, and Kurt followed me when I left the alley.</p><p>I was halfway across the square before I realized where I unconsciously had been heading, and stopped. But Kurt kept going on, drifting ahead of me on feet that I couldn’t quite see.</p><p>“The house,” he muttered. “It was this way.” Then he charged forward, through the grass and trees, as if he didn’t see them, and I had to follow.</p><p>Now he walked soundlessly into the parlor as I came up behind him. Inside, the upper part of the back wall had fallen in, and the second floor jutted out over the empty space. The chairs and sofa had burned to ash, leaving only their blackened and crumbling frames behind. The books were charred on their shelves, and the huge globe that had occupied a space near the hearth had fallen from its stand. Under a layer of ash, the gold outlines of the continent and the island still showed against the globe’s scorched face.</p><p>And every surface in the room was covered over with banks and vines of flowers that burned as soft as candles. Constantin had been here. He had done this for me.</p><p>Kurt turned in a slow circle in the center of the room, while I reached out until my fingers hovered over a short tree blooming with clusters of flowers, like the rhododendrons that grew on the continent. Their fires fluttered against my palm.</p><p>“What happened?” Kurt asked again, turning from the overgrown fireplace to face me.</p><p>I already had decided to tell him. But now that I had to find the words, I couldn’t.</p><p>“What was that game Constantin used to play?—the one that always ended with him blind drunk,” Kurt said, his eyes on my face.</p><p>“Two truths and a lie,” I answered, smiling in spite of myself. The younger element of Sérène’s nobility often disappeared early—with several bottles of whatever they could get their hands on—from functions at the palace to closet themselves in an out-of-the-way courtyard or parlor. Constantin hadn’t always joined in; sometimes he had managed to vanish even earlier than the rest of us. But when he did, two truths and a lie had been his favorite drinking game. <i>My truths are too wild to be believed, and everyone else’s are too ordinary to be anything but,</i> he told me once, archly, one arm linked with mine, the other holding a bottle of wine against his chest as we walked away from the ballroom.</p><p><i>Then why are you always the one who can’t stay on your feet at the end of the night, Constantin?</i> I had replied.</p><p>Those evenings often ended with Constantin slung between Kurt and me as we helped him back to his rooms. He never had bothered to pace himself, or stick to the rules.</p><p>“Two truths and a lie, then,” Kurt said.</p><p>Kurt knew so much about me—about us. He had always been there, standing against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest while Constantin held court in the middle of the room, telling stories, laughing, keeping the glasses full. Kurt had been there, but outside of it all. And yet, so many times when I looked at him, he looked back at me with a wry, exasperated smile or a raised brow, some silent commentary. He had been fond of us, in a way. I was sure of it.</p><p>And yet he had come to the hall that day to kill us both.</p><p>I looked away from him and found a spot to sit near the door to the hallway, my back against the wall. This wasn’t a conversation I wanted to stand for. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him sit across from me, nearly the entire width of the room between us.</p><p>“I won’t lie to you, Kurt.” When I looked up at him, he was sitting on the edge of the hearth. If he was still, I couldn’t see him at all for the wavering fires behind him.</p><p><i>Did you know anything of what else happened that day?</i>, I wanted to ask him. <i>Did you notice anything different?</i></p><p>Instead, I said, “Before you…arrived—not two hours before—Constantin was told that he had contracted the malichor. And earlier that morning I discovered that I was born here, on Tír Fradí. The Prince d‘Orsay abducted my mother from her clan and took me into his family to raise. …They lied to me my entire life.” I could not make out his expression against the ghost fires burning behind his head, but I caught a flicker of motion as he shifted, looking down.</p><p>“It was a banner day,” I added wryly.</p><p>“How is he still alive?” Kurt asked.</p><p>I shrugged. “That’s the story.”</p><p>I could feel his stare on me when he said, “You’re with him. I saw you with him after you left.”</p><p>I tensed, expecting him to say more. Even as I told myself that Kurt’s opinion did not matter to me, I knew it was a lie. It did. It still did. I wasn’t sure I could keep from shouting at him if he said anything against Constantin.</p><p>He surprised me, though. “Part of the story?” he asked. The way he said it, I knew he was studying me, waiting for me to squirm under his scrutiny.</p><p>“Would you have killed him, Kurt?” I asked. “If I hadn’t been there?”</p><p>He took in a breath, went quiet and still. That was enough of an answer, but then he said, “That was the order.”</p><p>“Why? You were suspicious of the Guard, after Reiner. Why would you follow an order that…” I lost the words.</p><p>“That was the order, Green Blood,” he repeated. He stood and came toward me, ignoring my glare. But he was careful not to touch the fire that flared around me as he knelt an arm’s length away. Now I could see his face as he leaned in, forcing me to meet his eyes. “There was no stopping it. The plans were already made. If it wasn’t me, it would have been somebody else.” He paused. “Somebody who would have put a round in your head before you could get a word out.”</p><p>“But it was you. Why?” I asked again.</p><p>He sat back on his heels and laughed once, scrubbing one hand through his hair, mussing it with his fingers as he looked away. “You’re still so green you don’t know what a Coin Guard is?”</p><p>I said nothing, and finally he said, “I know what I am.”</p><p>I took in a breath. He had told me so many times, in words and in actions, who he was. I was the one who had thought he was someone different. “A hired mercenary,” I said. “But…” I had to pause again to gather my courage. “I never thought you could do that to us, even if Torsten gave you the order. –I met him once, in San Matheus months after the Guard took it over. Kurt…how could you respect him?”</p><p>“We don’t get to choose our commanding officers, Green Blood. None of us. No more than you get to choose your prince.” He turned to look at me again. “The unit the Commander sent to deal with you, they were specially chosen for the task. Specially trained.” He smiled, and the bitterness in it surprised me. “If any of them were as old as you, I’d’ve been surprised. …I thought, if I led the unit, I could…”</p><p>“Protect them,” I finished for him, hardly louder than a breath. He paused, then nodded.</p><p>I never would have said that those Guardsmen and women needed protecting when Constantin and I had been on the receiving end of their rifles. But I remembered how their faces had looked after Kurt had killed himself, when they had dropped their weapons at my feet. How young they had looked.</p><p>I had just seen those same faces again behind Kurt in the alley. “They were executed,” I said.</p><p>Kurt hadn’t wanted to protect them from us. He may have trained me, but still, one woman, even well armed, wouldn’t have a chance in a real fight with a unit of trained Guardsmen. I had only beaten Kurt because I had shamed him into facing me in an honorable duel—or so I had thought at the time. Constantin couldn’t have put up much resistance, and the Guard had dealt with my companions before any of us had been fully aware of the threat.</p><p>Who had he wanted to protect them from? Their officers? The Guard itself? He still wore that bitter smile, and I remembered Reiner and how Kurt had blamed himself for his recruit’s death. He had found the camp where Reiner had been transferred; he had told me that much. But there had always been more pressing matters that had carried me in other directions. I’d never found the time to investigate the Guard’s activities before they moved against us.</p><p>What I didn’t know was the most crucial piece, and I may never know it. Even if I asked him and Kurt told me what he’d learned, it was too late to change anything now. The dead would stay dead.</p><p>Kurt stood and turned away to walk back across the room. I kept my eyes on him as he stopped in front of the far wall, where the paper had burned away and flowers clung to the exposed boards, and planted his hands on his hips. “And after?” he asked. “What happened next?”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>The light never changed in Tír Anemen, but shadows moved across the floor as the sun crossed the sky in the living world. By the time I began to tell Kurt about the events of the last two days, the sun had started to set. Even in the land of the spirits, I could feel my power waxing as night came on.</p><p>Kurt had stayed silent the entire time, but now and then he paced along the far wall or went to stare out of one of the holes where the windows had been. When I told him what Commander Brigida had said about Torsten, he laughed under his breath.</p><p>I waited, and a moment later, he shook his head and turned to face me. “Did she say anything else? Anything about the Guard?”</p><p>“No,” I said. “Nothing. –But, do you think the Coin Guard could have survived after losing San Matheus, Kurt? Who would trust them now?”</p><p>He nodded, looking away, searching the floor. “You’re probably right. But if Sieglinde…” He trailed off.</p><p>“Sieglinde?”</p><p>He looked at me for a moment from across the room, then said, “Nothing. You’re right. It doesn’t matter now. That greedy bastard Torsten was probably the end of us—and who’s to say it’s not what we deserve?”</p><p>“I’m not sure it’s what all of you deserved,” I said. “…I don’t think you got what you deserved, Kurt.”</p><p>“I got exactly what I deserved. You’re a fool if you think anything different. You’re too kind for your own good, Green Blood. But you’re not a fool.”</p><p>His voice was harsh, his reply coming almost before I’d finished speaking. There was nothing I could say to that; I looked away. I had been a fool if I’d imagined that I still knew him, that I ever had. The man who had smiled at me from across the room as Constantin told one of his overblown stories, the man who had put me through my paces with the rapier again and again, patient and uncompromising, the man who had fought beside me—he had always been the man who would walk into the hall to shoot us.</p><p>Hadn’t he?</p><p>How had I so completely misunderstood him?</p><p>Across the room, Kurt cleared his throat. Before I realized he had moved, he was squatting down on his heels in front of me. “Two truths and a lie,” he said, when I looked up, flinching as his feet came into view.</p><p>“One,” he said, sticking his left thumb up, resting his elbow on his knee. “I was trained in a camp like the one that killed Reiner. That’s what gave me some of these.” He rubbed his fingers over the scar across his nose. “And others.</p><p>“Two.” He held up his pointer finger. “I didn’t know about the coup, not until the day before. Torsten called me up and laid it all out, said it was my chance to prove my loyalties.” That bitter smile twisted his lips as he glanced away.</p><p>“Three.” He met my eyes again, holding up his middle finger. “I wanted to die that day, when I saw you there. When you looked at me.”</p><p>He was holding my gaze; I couldn’t look away from him. “One of those was supposed to have been a lie,” I said. I couldn’t know the facts but, all the same, I knew everything he’d told me was true. I knew that much about him. Kurt wouldn’t lie to me.</p><p>The corner of his mouth twitched. “It’s a dainty’s game,” he said. “I’m no good at it.”</p><p>I almost smiled. “No, you’re not.”</p><p>He stood and reached out to help me up before he remembered what he was. When I glanced at him and pushed myself to my feet unaided, he took a step away, clasping his hands behind his back.</p><p>“So, you’re trying to stop a war with Síora. You think we can help with that?”</p><p>“I hope so. …You can see through into the living world, yes? You said you saw me with Constantin after I went back through, the first time we met.”</p><p>“I did.”</p><p>There was something he wasn’t saying. “But?” I asked.</p><p>“I only remembered when I saw you again,” he said. He looked past me, at the wall. “Nothing stands out. Nothing sticks in my head. …I couldn’t tell you what I’ve seen here, or what I’ve been doing.”</p><p>“Do you remember the last time we talked?”</p><p>“I do,” he said. “But a woman on fire makes an impression.” He glanced down at the flames that wreathed my shoulders.</p><p>He could see into the living world and remember what he saw. But what if he and the others forgot what they were looking for? Could I trust them to stay by the village and watch?</p><p>“If I asked you to watch Síora, would you remember?”</p><p>He frowned. “I want to say yes, Green Blood. But truly, it’s a gamble.”</p><p>“We have to try. You’re the best idea I have.” If this didn’t work, I might not be out of ideas, but putting a watch on Vedrhais would mean pulling others into our conflict, putting them at risk.</p><p>He made a noise low in his throat that might have been a laugh. “First time I've heard that.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>Below us, Vedrhais slept. The village fire still burned in the central clearing, colorless and silent. In Tír Anemen, ghost fires flickered, limning the moss and grasses that grew on the roofs of the roundhouses in white. There were guards stationed at the paths that led into the village, and two sitting at the fire. But the night had been quiet, and they talked among themselves in low voices, not giving much thought to turning a careful ear to the forest around them. The guard nearest us, standing in the shadow of the stone gate, had turned to face his fellows and join in their conversation. They knew this forest and everything in it.</p><p>Or, everything in it that lived.</p><p>Ghosts crowded the path behind me, and though they stayed quiet, I could almost feel the pressure of their thoughts, their doubts. They had been in Tír Anemen long enough to know they were no longer themselves, only shadows. Kurt wasn’t the only one who had doubts about their ability to complete the mission I’d given them. But I knew Kurt would try, and he had given the others reason to try as well.</p><p>Kurt shifted beside me. His arm passed through mine, leaving a chill on my skin. “How are we doing this?” he asked.</p><p>“I’ve never haunted anything before, officially,” I said and saw him smile out of the corner of my eye. “We’ll try this first.” I lifted the coat I held. Before I’d led the Guard to Vedhrais, I’d gone back to the sanctuary at Credhenes to collect my coat, the one I’d left there when Constantin and I had been called to Vígnámrí. It wasn’t a sophisticated plan; it wasn’t much of a plan at all. But until we knew what problems we would face, it was a first step to get us started.</p><p>Kurt raised a skeptical eyebrow, but he nodded. Crossing his arms over his chest, he looked out over the village. “All right. We’re here—what are our orders?”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. The Haunting of Vedrhais</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <i>Síora</i>
  </p>
</div><p>She shivered in the cold air that seeped in when the messenger from Vigyigidaw opened the door to leave. Even when he had closed the door behind him, their home with its large fire felt colder for his having been there. She turned to look at Eseld. Had her sister felt the chill of his words?</p><p>Eseld didn’t look at her but got to her feet and stared at the door for so long, her hands braced on her hips, that Síora finally spoke. “Will we go, a sír?”</p><p>Eseld glanced down at her, frowning. That did not mean much, though; Eseld always looked that way when she was facing down a decision. Síora waited, until finally Eseld’s eyes snapped to hers. “We will,” Eseld said. “We will see what the kings say.”</p><p>“You think some will come to join us. –Derdre?”</p><p>Her sister nodded and blew out a sigh, some of the tension leaving her brow. “The death of en on míl frichtimen wasn’t enough. But the renaígse coming again may turn her against them.”</p><p>“De Sardet will know this, too,” Síora said. “She will try to keep Derdre on her side.” It was strange for her to imagine what De Sardet might do. She had been with the renaígse for several seasons, and she knew, as if she was with De Sardet still, what she would do, how she would think. But it didn’t feel like certain knowing. De Sardet had done things that had surprised her—telling the màl of the Saul Lasser about the camp the Mindshakers had made to hurt and kill Derdre’s people, leaving the mad healer alive after she’d learned what he had done to her cousin. The kings of the Saul Lasser and the Lions had their rights, De Sardet had said at the time; she could not attack their people without perhaps starting a war.</p><p>She had gotten what she wanted, in time, but she had done it by going down the opposite path. How could they be certain what path she would take to bring the Nauts back to Tír Fradí?</p><p>“The kings will know the truth.” Eseld came to sit on Síora’s mat, close enough that their knees pressed together. She leaned forward, catching Síora’s eyes. “The usurpers only chased their enemies among the renaígse away. Now they will bring their caranten back, and they will make our land their own.”</p><p>Síora nodded and tried to push down the feeling that was rising in her, like the ground was rolling under her feet. Was it the possibility of the renaígse coming back that made her feel this way, or the certainty of seeing De Sardet again? She saw her often enough in dreams but never in flesh and blood, not since the battle at Vígnámrí.</p><p>“Ullan will be there,” she said as the thought came to her, looking up at Eseld.</p><p>“He will be,” Eseld said. “But it is nothing.” She smiled when she saw the look on Síora’s face. But like all of Eseld’s smiles, it had an edge like stone. “Síora, you know so much of healing and not enough of war. It is between our clans, and it is done. The High King has no place in it. If we do not take Vígnámrí for our own, Dunncas will not act.”</p><p>Síora had known that, but still she nodded and smiled at her sister. She had known the ways of war between clans; their mother had taught them both from when they had been very small. But knowing how to use a sword and using it were different things. And after—how did you sit across from one you had tried to kill in Dorhadgenedu?</p><p>That she would have to learn, and she would have to learn it with Ullan and De Sardet’s eyes on her.</p><p>Eseld stood. “We leave the day after next, at first light,” she said as she strode to the door. They would have to walk for over a day to reach Dorhadgenedu, but other clans had longer distances to travel. They would still arrive before many.</p><p>Síora followed Eseld out of the roundhouse. The messenger had come as the sun was climbing down from its highest point, and now Aidan would be waiting for her.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>She and Aidan had sparred nearly every day since he had come to Vedrhais. It had been good for him. He had not been a warrior in Wenshaveye; the first time they had stood across from each other, he had held his blade away from him as if it might have a mind to turn and cut the one that held it. She had thought to ask him if this was what he really wanted, to say that healers were needed much more than warriors. But the look in his eyes had stopped her. The anger he had carried when they first met in Dorhadgenedu after the battle on the mountain had not left him. It only had grown sharper.</p><p>That was why Eseld had let him come to live with the Gaís Rad, she thought. Eseld had seen the anger, too. She saw her own anger in him.</p><p>Aidan was not waiting for her by the village fire as he usually did. When she finally found him, he was sitting at the edge of the pool north of the village, bent over a pile of plants and a row of little bowls, the whistles of insects and croaks of frogs rising around him. His brow was drawn as he tore the leaves from one green stalk, dropped them into a bowl, and began to crush them into a paste using a small stone pestle, but his face was as peaceful as she had ever seen it. Perhaps today was not a day for sparring.</p><p>She sat beside him, only watching until he looked up and offered her the bowl. “Smell,” he said.</p><p>She dipped a finger into the green paste he had made and held it up to her nose. “It is sharp, bitter.” She touched the tip of her tongue to her finger and tasted nothing, but when she rolled the bits of leaves to the back of her mouth, she had to suppress a shudder. Aidan watched as she grimaced. “It tastes like biting flower.”</p><p>Aidan nodded and handed her the stalk of the plant. The leaves that were left were single and spear-shaped, edged with smaller points. The stalk did not have the small, irritating thorns of biting flower, but the flowers of this plant looked like the other, small and blue, with five petals of the same size. But there were also darker violet flowers among the blue.</p><p>She dipped her hand into the pool and sipped the water to clean her mouth, spitting it out over her shoulder.</p><p>Aidan scooped up a bit of the paste and put it in his mouth. He chewed at it for a moment before he took a swallow of water and spat. “It sits on the tongue like biting flower,” he said, turning to look at her. He pressed his lips together, holding his shoulders tense, and Síora smiled knowingly at him until finally his lips pulled in a grimace and he shook himself. She laughed. “Ugh—it is bitter. And it pricks at my tongue even without thorns.”</p><p>“For wounds?” she asked.</p><p>“I think so.”</p><p>The leaves of biting flower were good to pack in wounds to speed healing and keep the flesh clean. If this plant tasted like the other and felt the same on the tongue, it might have the same healing power. They would have to harvest more of the leaves and try it alongside biting flower to prove its nature.</p><p>“This one is new?” she asked, handing him back the stalk.</p><p>He nodded. “I found it in the morning, here,” he said, gesturing toward the banks of the pond. When Síora looked, she could see blue and violet heads of flowers tucked among the grasses and shrubs that crowded the banks of the pond. They hadn’t been there the last time she walked this way. And they weren’t the only new plant she had seen in the past moons. Vedrhais’s hunters had brought back new game, as well, strange creatures that did not seem related to any of the ones they knew.</p><p>It was strange to think how quickly their wariness of the new creatures and plants had turned to curiosity, then to trust. Now the clan’s hunters often brought back dantréid—a creature that had not had a name in the fall, that had not existed. And now she knew that its meat was fatty and mild compared to their usual game, almost sweet. And here she sat, with Aidan, testing new plants on her tongue to learn them. Eventually, they would give them all names.</p><p>She studied the banks of the pond, finding new shapes and colors among the plants she had known all her life. The new things had not arrived until after en on míl frichtimen’s death, after the usurpers had taken Credhenes and the island. Even though the flowers were beautiful and would heal them, and the game was plentiful and would feed them…could they trust the creations of their enemies? And if she saw them as beautiful, was she betraying her clan, her sister?</p><p>Aidan took another plant and began to pick its leaves, dropping them into a clean bowl.</p><p>“Do you trust these?” Síora asked, gesturing toward the pile of branches and stalks at his side, though he wasn’t looking at her.</p><p>He stopped and straightened, turning his pestle over in his hands as he looked down for a moment at the plants he’d collected, then up at her. “…No,” he said finally, “But I see them, and I think that Catasach would want to know all of their powers. So…” He nodded toward his bowls. They were among the few things he’d brought with him from Wenshaveye. Perhaps Catasach had given them to him.</p><p>“Was he a good tiern?” In all the time Síora had known Aidan, she had never asked him this. Always the anger that filled him had kept her silent. She had never seen him quiet as he was now, and she asked the question before she thought if it was a good thing to do.</p><p>He nodded, looking down at his hands. His face was open and soft under the blue swirls of his paint. When she saw him this way, she remembered that he was younger than she was. By only a cycle, true—but then, the cycles of some people were fuller than the cycles of others. “I thought he knew everything,” Aidan said, and she was surprised when he smiled. “But always he was studying. We would walk every morning and gather plants and shellfish from the river, and if no one was sick, we would make teas and cures. I thought I would never remember all that he knew, and still he wanted to know more.”</p><p>Aidan fell silent. Síora understood. Along with Catasach, some of his knowledge had died. It may be lost forever. As she’d told De Sardet when her cousin had fallen ill, Catasach was the best of their healers.</p><p>“You will continue to learn, as Catasach taught you,” she said softly. He nodded, but his face hardened again. The anger was never gone from him.</p><p>Abruptly, he took the bowl he’d just been using and dumped the leaves out onto the ground. “You are right. We shouldn’t trust these—not until they are gone.”
Aidan glanced at her, then pushed himself to his feet. “Can we spar?”</p><p>Síora stood. But before she followed him down the hill back to the village, she picked up the bowls he had left behind and the plants he had gathered. Perhaps they should not be quick to trust the new creatures and plants that were appearing. But they still could trust Catasach and the want for knowledge that would have led him to study everything new. She was sure of it.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>The light had gone and the air had a cold bite to it by the time Síora called an end to their sparing match. Aidan’s arms were shaking when he brought his blade up to fend her off her last attack. She leaned into the blow, and stone scrapped against stone, until Aidan staggered back from her, holding his sword low. She gathered her balance quickly and swept it out of his hands.</p><p>He stood panting, looking at his sword where it lay in the dust.</p><p>“Enough,” Síora said, straightening and sliding her sword back through her belt. “Or you will lose your face.” She smiled at him to let him know she was teasing, and he put two fingers to his cheek, laughing breathlessly when they came away wet with sweat and streaked white and blue. He went to retrieve his sword, then paused with his hands on his thighs to catch his breath.</p><p>Their audience, several of the old mothers of the village, stopped their work at the fire to smile at Aidan and murmur to each other. They were a little in love with him. If their daughters had not died with Bládnid at díd e kíden nádaígeis, one or all of them would have gone to Aidan’s father and mother to arrange a match with him. –If his father and mother still lived, she thought. He never had spoken of them.</p><p>So many had died. And now all the ones who were left had to fight.</p><p>“You are becoming a warrior,” she told him.</p><p>He looked up at her, and she was surprised to see doubt on his face.</p><p>“Tell me,” she said when he didn’t speak.</p><p>He shrugged, looking away as he stood up straight. His brow was furrowed. “Is it enough?” he asked. “I cannot win against you when we fight.”</p><p>There was a question in his mind that he did not ask. She had asked herself the same one, again and again, before she had gone into her first deadly battle. Síora went to him and grasped his shoulder. She waited until he met her eyes. “You do not fight alone,” she said. “The Gaís Rad are with you. I’m with you. –You are my carants, Aidan, and I will fight by your side.”</p><p>Once, he might have shaken off her hand or looked away. Now, though, he held her eyes and smiled and nodded. And even though his smile came and went like the shadow of a cloud, it still had been there.</p><p>Síora gestured with her chin toward the fire where the clan was gathering. “Go eat. Rest. This is enough for one day.”</p><p>He started toward the fire, then turned back to her when she did not follow. “You are not coming?”</p><p>“No, not yet,” she said. “I’m watching now.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>Watching was not Síora’s duty. She was one of the clan’s healers and would be doneigad once Arwant returned to the earth. Eseld hadn’t asked her to watch at night, but Síora had offered herself. When she had, her sister had looked at her with a question in her eyes, but she had not asked it. And for that, Síora was relieved. She couldn’t tell Eseld how her thoughts pulled her away when she sat in the circle around the fire, how they kept her from sleeping. It was easier to be alone and let them come until they had exhausted themselves and her.</p><p>She took her position at the start of the path that led down into the village from the south. Here, the village’s fire was a warm glow through the trees. She could hear a low murmur of voices. Someone was drumming, and a woman was singing. Ceallach, her voice low and resonant. There were others with Síora in the forest but far enough away that she could not see or hear them without reaching down into the earth to feel the beat of their footsteps.</p><p>Farther up the path was the camp that De Sardet had created when they had returned with Kurt and Vasco after the battle at díd e kíden nádaígeis, after they had found Bládnid dead in the Lions’ fort. They had stayed for two days, long enough for De Sardet’s wound to close and for Síora to return her mother’s body to the village and help those of her clan who had been wounded. The camp was empty now, only a circle of packed earth and the ashes from their fires. She had gone there once after the last battle at Dorhadgenedu to see if anything useful had been left behind. She wouldn’t go again. But though she could turn her feet away, she could not stop her thoughts from betraying her and going back to the light of that fire and the warm voices of people who would become her caranten.</p><p>
  <i>She was never that. Enough, Síora.</i>
</p><p>The voice in her mind that chastised her was Eseld’s voice. It was very easy for her to imagine what Eseld would say if her sister knew her thoughts. Perhaps that was why she did not tell her. In Síora’s mind, they had talked already.</p><p>Eseld’s voice pulled her back to herself. The voices still rose from around the fire, and from the south, from the forest, she could hear the cries of tenlan hunting, not close enough to be a danger. She shifted to settle back against a nearby tree and only then did she feel the cold. It came suddenly, stinging her hands and face and stealing the warmth from her clothing until she had to huddle down and tuck her hands under her arms. Her breaths came shallow; soon her teeth were rattling together.</p><p>She had never felt a cold so sharp, not even on the heights of the mountain where there was no shelter from the winds that blew in from the sea. Her breath rose in a cloud in front of her face, and Síora brought her hand up to her mouth unthinking. She exhaled again and felt the damp air on her fingers, like fog.</p><p>What was this cold? It was not natural, but it also was no magic she knew.</p><p>She sat huddled against the tree, every sense alive. The forest was quiet and dark except for the shadows cast by the distant fire. But then she heard voices over her right shoulder. She did not catch the words. The voices were low, clipped—the voices of guards saying only what needed to be said while they watched. Had someone else noticed the cold? She looked around but could see no one else near her.</p><p>Just as she was standing, the crackle of footsteps on dead leaves and twigs alerted her to someone coming. Cian appeared out of the dark forest, moving in a careful crouch. He caught himself against her tree when Síora waved him over. “Voices,” he said, his eyes shadowed by the crane mask that he wore. “Did you hear?”</p><p>“It was not you?” She asked the question already knowing the answer, and her heart began to drum in her chest.</p><p>“No,” he said, looking out into the forest, his breath misting in front of his face. “They spoke the tongue of the renaígse.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>It wasn’t until the morning, when sleep pricked at the corners of her eyes and she had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from yawning, that she found the strip of cloth hanging from a branch at head-height, near to where she had been watching last night. After Cian had come to her, she had sent him to wake Eseld and the last of the village’s warriors and had gone to search the forest. Others among the watchers had heard the voices—voices of men and women, all renaígse—but there had been no other signs of them or of an attack that might be coming. <i>You are chasing spirits, Síora,</i> Eseld said, short-tempered, just before dawn.</p><p>Now Síora reached out and worked loose the knot that held the fabric to the branch and smoothed the long, uneven strip between her fingers. It was dark blue, heavy and finely woven—fabric crafted by the renaígse. One end of the strip was darkened by an old stain. Suddenly, the memory came to her of De Sardet shrugging on her coat and belting her saber around her waist, as she had done every morning before they had left camp. The strip had been torn from De Sardet’s coat.</p><p>Why?</p><p>When had she been here?</p><p>The fabric was a signal, that much she could see. Síora looked up and searched the trees and saw nothing else unfamiliar. But when she walked west, in the direction Cian had come from the night before, she found another strip of fabric tied to a branch like the first had been. This one was edged with a braid of gold embroidery.</p><p>She was fully awake now. She walked a circle around the entire village, pulling strips of fabric like stubborn leaves down from the trees. They had been tied within sight of the village, but not close enough that they could be seen from the village.</p><p>De Sardet had been here, so close. She was planning something.</p><p>When she reached the place where she’d started, she walked straight to the house she and Eseld shared, pushing open the door as Eseld was talking with Arwant, and dropped a bundle of torn fabric at Eseld’s feet.</p><p>Eseld looked from the fabric to her, frowning. “What is this?”</p><p>“Pieces of De Sardet’s…tunic,” Síora said, “I found them tied to the trees, all around the village.”</p><p>Eseld dug her fingers into the pile, lifted a handful of the strips and let them fall again. She stared down at the floor for a moment before glancing back up. “It is a signal,” she said. “For an attack?”</p><p>Síora shook her head. It wasn’t that. She had no proof that could be seen or held, but she knew that De Sardet would not attack them if the Gaís Rad had made no move against her or the usurper. And that they had not been killed already told Síora that De Sardet had convinced the usurper not to attack as well. “Places for watchers, I think, a sír,” she said. “They were tied within sight of the village, all around us. –Such a strategy would spread warriors too thin for an attack,” she added as the thought came to her.</p><p>Eseld nodded. “The voices?”</p><p>“We have found nothing,” Síora said. “But the voices are tied to De Sardet’s tunic; I am sure of it.” It wasn’t an attack, but De Sardet was planning something. And Síora would discover what it was. She wasn’t skilled like De Sardet in these strategies, but surely Síora knew enough of her to guess what she might do. It had to be enough.</p><p>Eseld waved for her to go, and she left her sister to walk out into thin morning sunlight and air so cold that it stole her breath.</p><p>The sun rose high into the sky, but the air grew no warmer. Síora sat by the fire, watching the light sparkling on the frost that coated their houses and the pile of wood by the fire. She could remember only two other times she had woken to see frost in the morning. The first time, her father had still been alive. He had woken her by touching a frost-rimmed leaf to the tip of her nose and then taken her out with him to gather, admiring the pictures she drew with the warmth of her finger on leaves and on rocks.</p><p>The second had been the winter after he had died.</p><p>She was too tired, letting herself get carried away by memories. She fought back a yawn and turned to the fire instead. The village’s craftspeople had brought their work to the shared fire, out in the sunlight. They bent over bowls and tunics and spears, and the low hum of their conversation lulled her enough that she didn’t hear Aidan approaching before he put a hand on her shoulder.</p><p>She jumped.</p><p>When she turned to look at him, he wore a tentative smile. He was pleased that he had surprised her. But when he saw her face, his eyes narrowed in concern. “You didn’t sleep.”</p><p>She laughed under her breath and shook her head, then had to press her lips together to keep another yawn from escaping. Aidan had been among those that they had woken in the night to search the forest for a band of renaígse, but Eseld had sent him and most of the others, including the ones who had watched with Síora after sunset, back to sleep when they had found nothing.</p><p>“What is it, Aidan?” she asked, when she could speak. He hesitated and looked at her as though he would drag her off to her mat, and she added, “It is not my first night without sleep.”</p><p>“I went into the forest this morning,” he finally said, kneeling down so they could speak face to face. “The air is warmer there—much warmer.”</p><p>Was this another sign?</p><p>She pushed herself to her feet, and Aidan followed as she made for the path leading north out of the village. As they climbed the hill, she could feel the sun again, and she began to feel warm in her tunic. Her breaths no longer fogged the air in front of her. When they turned to look back down the way they had come, the air around the village’s fire seemed cloudy, misty, like the fog of a hundred people breathing.</p><p>“Something is there,” she said, and beside her, Aidan nodded.</p><p>“You see it?” she asked.</p><p>He looked at her. “Yes… You think the others don’t?”</p><p>“Some, maybe,” she said, turning back toward the village. “But most of them, no.”</p><p>The mist moved. In the few moments they stood there watching, it seemed to spread and make its way up the path toward them. Síora felt the first cold touch of it and shivered. “It follows us.”</p><p>Aidan said something, but she did not hear him. Another voice spoke, nearby, in the renaígse tongue. “Stop, stop.” The voice barked, “Fuck it all—back off.”</p><p>“Síora?” Aidan asked when she looked around herself, feeling the air with her fingers as if there might be something solid there.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p><i>You will trust your senses more if you sleep,</i> Aidan had told her, frowning at her as though he was the master and she was the student. </p><p>The sun had risen to its height and was climbing down the sky. Síora still had not slept, though Aidan met her with a frown whenever she looked at him, and even Eseld had paused once when they had crossed paths and looked at Síora with concern.</p><p>She couldn’t sleep, not until she knew what De Sardet was doing.</p><p>The strange, chill air did not come back into the village, but Síora could feel it sometimes against her back or on her face when she turned. No one else seemed to notice it. Though people shared the story of voices in the forest, they still took up their work and went about the village unguarded. The hunters still went out—though they were quieter when they did and carried their spears in their hands.</p><p>Because she had been watching the forest, she was the first to see the forest guardian leave the trees. But as he came down into the village and crept between the houses on long-fingered hands and feet, his head held low and turning from side to side as if he was looking for something, others stopped what they were doing and stood back to watch. The guardians did not go so far from their sacred places and had not since the first guardians had been called.</p><p>He did not seem to notice that his kin stood around him. He looked once at Síora—or beyond her?—and paused before standing to his full height. His eyes fixed on something at the edge of the village, and Síora stepped out of his way as he continued past her. She was close enough to reach out and touch the moss that hung down from his antlers and hear him rumbling to himself. Whatever had brought him to the village, he wasn’t angry. He wasn’t sick, the way the guardians had been when the usurper first began to sap en on míl frichtimen’s power. She remembered the day she and Arwant had gone to Cougreda to find its guardian healed of the sickness that had seemed to burn its skin. All of the clan’s guardians had been healed. After she had seen this, Síora had gone to Eseld with her doubts, but her sister had said that they were not the same guardians, that they couldn’t be.</p><p>Perhaps there was truth in Eseld’s words. Why would a guardian come into the village, only to ignore his people? What was here for him?</p><p>The guardian went past the circle of huts, and Síora followed to keep sight of him. At the edge of the village, where the trees began, she watched him stop, crouching and reaching out a hand.</p><p>Nothing happened.</p><p>Nothing happened, but the guardian shook himself and growled once. Then he stood and walked slowly into the trees without looking back.</p><p>The voice at her shoulder, the one she’d heard earlier, sighed roughly.</p><p>“What is it?” she asked quietly.</p><p>Perhaps Aidan was right to be worried, if she thought she might be answered by the empty air.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>The shadows were growing long when the hunters returned, bringing with them a story of marked trees and a picture drawn in dead bark. This time Eseld went with her when Síora left to see for herself. They found the sign where the hunters said they would—one of the pictures that De Sardet had called a sigil, to mark the different factions of the renaígse, the way the clans of the Yecht Fradí marked their faces.</p><p>“You know it?” Eseld asked, tracing her fingers around the sigil’s edge. The mark had been put into the tree at head-height, though Síora could not have said how. The wood had not been burned or carved. Yet the bark was scarred; it curled, brittle and dead, away from the lines of the sigil. Síora nodded when Eseld glanced at her. She knew this mark; she had seen it often enough when De Sardet had business at the Coin Guard barracks.</p><p>“It is the mark of the Bod Airní.”</p><p>Eseld blew out a breath and straightened. She swept her hand across the sigil, scattering pieces of bark. She turned and searched the forest for a moment before abruptly turning back and starting for the village. Síora followed.</p><p>Eseld glanced at her as they walked. “You will sleep now, a sír,” she said. “I need you to watch during full dark.”</p><p>“Do you think they will attack?” Full dark was the watch that De Sardet and her companions had called the middle watch, the middle of the night. While Kurt had been with them, he had taken that watch many nights. After Kurt’s death, they had used sticks to decide who would take middle watch, pulling them out of De Sardet’s fist to see who had the unlucky shortest one.</p><p>Síora caught herself before she could complain—not about watching but about sleeping. What if they came while she was asleep?</p><p>But her twin knew her well enough to know what she wanted to say, even when she stayed silent. Eseld sighed. “You are wobbling on your feet, Síora,” she said, chiding. “Sleep at home before you fall asleep with your sword in your hand.</p><p>“And an enemy at your throat,” Eseld added when she glanced over and saw Síora’s face. She was sly when she said, “If I have to save you, I will tell the story to the whole clan.”</p><p>“Oi, a sír!” Eseld ducked to the side, laughing, when Síora shoved at her. It had been so long since she’d heard her sister laugh that Síora laughed too, and forgot the prickle of annoyance she felt at Eseld’s words. She sighed, rubbing her eyes. They ached; everything ached. “I will sleep,” she said.</p><p>Eseld put a hand on her back. “Come, let’s return home.”</p><p>Her sister left her alone in their house. Eseld would send the first watchers out, but Síora knew that she would not return home afterward. If an attack might come, Eseld would stay awake. She may have ordered Síora to rest, but she would not follow that order herself.</p><p>Nor did sleep follow orders. Síora lay awake on her mat, staring toward the shadows cast by the fire on the wall and seeing instead the mark drawn on the tree. Why would De Sardet ally with the Coin Guard? Why would she trust them? They nearly had killed her. Even if the Guard was on Tír Fradí still, the renaígse made long enemies. Their king had refused his help when De Sardet had gone to him to ask for aid against Constantin. He had refused and laughed.</p><p>De Sardet and the usurper had all of the power of the land. Why did they need the help of their enemies?</p><p>This day had given her no answers. But the heat of the fire was soothing in the chill of the empty house, and in the middle of her worries, sleep finally found her.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>She was shaken awake by a hand on her arm. “Síora!” Ailín, one of the master hunter’s apprentices, stared down at her, his face shadowed in the weak firelight and his eyes wide. “There are lights in the forest. The màl wants you.”</p><p>Lights in the forest. She was up, taking her sword and following the boy before she was awake enough to question what he had told her. They left the village for the forest, and when they reached the knot of their kin in the trees, she realized that she had seen in her mind the light from torches, not…</p><p>Eseld reached out a hand to her, and Síora went to stand beside her sister, narrowing her eyes. “What is it?” Eseld shook her head, her lips pressed in a tense line. There was a light, yes, but it was a cool flicker that cast shadows through the trees, and not the warm glow of torches. Síora could not see its source. The light died, but farther away another appeared, weak and unsteady but there.</p><p>The cold air that had followed her since she woke seemed to move then. She shivered as the chill grew harsh on her hands and face, but it passed quickly. The night air seemed warm in its absence. The spirit that had been following her was leaving.</p><p>There was no time to think. Síora followed, her hand outstretched to feel where it was, though her fingers began to feel dead with the cold.</p><p>“Síora!” Eseld hissed behind her.</p><p>“Stay there,” Síora called back softly over her shoulder. “I will be fine.”</p><p>She had no way of knowing that, but she thought maybe the spirit did not mean to harm her. Only now, when she saw the lights, did she think of it as a spirit, but the thought came to her with the certainty of truth. Vedrhaís was being visited by spirits who had not returned to the earth.</p><p>The spirit she followed seemed to stop. Cold air enfolded her, and Síora paused, letting her hand fall to her side. “Tell me who you are,” she murmured. Perhaps no one had performed the rituals for them, and they were still bound to their graves. Perhaps they had died on the mountain and had never been buried.</p><p>She felt the touch of the cold more intensely on her face. But no answer came, and the cold air slipped away from her again.</p><p>There were rituals a doneigad used to return the unknown dead back to the earth, but she had not learned them. She did not know if Arwant knew them. The doneigada who had known them may be dead or… No one knew where Mev was, what body she had been called into.</p><p>She reached for the spirit again but found nothing. The cold was gone. She had nothing to follow. But then the light flickered again, closer. Was the spirit being drawn to it? Síora slipped between the trees, treading carefully through the fallen leaves and twigs though there was no sign the light or the spirit could hear her, until she had a clear view.</p><p>Rays of white light, like the sun spearing through clouds, radiated outward from a point nearly level with her head. Or…it looked like light, though the color was strange. Where it touched the trees and the ground, it seemed to sap colors away rather than give them life. Síora held up her arms to look at them. The sleeves and cuffs of her tunic were a dull gray; her hands looked bloodless, a corpse’s hands.</p><p>When she looked again at the light, the rays framed a face.</p><p>It was a young face, unlined. The spirit’s eyes were wide as it looked at her. She couldn’t have said if the spirit was male or female. “Cwé to?” she tried, but the spirit only stared at her, then looked around itself. The light flickered, grew brighter. Its wide-eyed look of surprise changed as the spirit’s brows drew together, but whether with determination or grief or anger, Síora did not know.</p><p>But, the spirit was renaígse. “Who are you?” she asked again. “Let me help you.”</p><p>The spirit looked at her again. It opened its mouth. But just as it might have said something, just as Síora leaned forward to hear, something drew it away back into the light. The spirit was gone, then the light with it, leaving Síora alone in the dark with ghost lights dancing in her eyes.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>As suddenly as the strange signs began, they stopped. One by one, the lights disappeared, leaving the forest in darkness once again and comforting quiet. The air warmed until they could stand there without shaking. An hour passed, then another, disturbed only by a small herd of andríg moving between meadows. Finally, Eseld sent the others back to their positions to wait for the ones who would take over for them. Síora settled down where she was, squatting on her heels with her back against a tree, not for the cold this time but for weariness. Her legs and her shoulders ached, and a pounding had started in her head, radiating from around her branches.</p><p>Still, when Aidan came to take her place, she sent him a little further west and stayed where she was. If the signs returned, she would be here.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>It was still dark when she snapped awake. A voice was calling her name. Aidan was coming toward her through the trees.</p><p>But, hadn’t there been two voices? She had heard her name spoken very close, as if the speaker had been just at her shoulder, but there was no one there.</p><p>She stood to meet Aidan.</p><p>“Renaígse,” he said, drawing close. He pointed toward the north. “Camped by díd e kíden nádaígeis.”</p><p>“What clan?” she asked. She was already walking, Aidan striding along at her side.</p><p>“Mindshakers. They wear gray, and suns at their necks. Oona watches them, but…”</p><p>He trailed off, glancing away, but Síora understood. Both of them were younger than she, and neither one had faced the Mindshakers in battle. They hadn’t faced their magic or their guns.</p><p>The sky was growing lighter over the trees to the east. She broke into a jog, angling toward the east until their feet found the path. If they hurried there, they may catch the Mindshakers asleep. As she moved, her limbs felt strong again, her blood warmed. She shook off the chill of night until she felt it only as a faint touch on the back of her neck, nipping at her heels as she left it behind.</p><p>“We will be enough,” she said. “We will take them by surprise.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>She didn’t hide her satisfaction when the three Mindshakers woke and saw her kneeling in the center of their camp, lit by the fire that had given them away. Already they were bound where they lay by thick roots; there was nothing they could do. She had been careful to trap their wrists against the ground, so they could not use their rings.</p><p>She stood and went to the nearest man, kneeling at his side as he stared at her and fought to breathe. His face was pale except for angry red patches spreading across his cheeks. As she pinned his hand to the earth with her own, he sputtered, “Who are you?”</p><p>She did not answer. He wore a ring on the third finger of his left hand, one of the Mindshakers’ magic rings. She pulled it off his finger while he struggled uselessly. She glanced at his other hand quickly as she stood, but he wore nothing there. “Check their hands,” she told the others. “Take their rings.”</p><p>One of the other men began to struggle as she spoke. He balled his hands into fists and tried to jerk away from Aidan when he grabbed his wrist. This one understood their language, then. He wore a gray coat and trousers instead of armor like his brothers; perhaps he was a missionary like the ones that had come to Vedhraís, and not a warrior. Síora watched, but Aidan had no need of her help. He pressed his thumb hard against the underside of the man’s wrist until he opened his hand with a gasp of pain. Aidan stood and gave his ring to Síora.</p><p>The third Mindshaker seemed to realize there was nothing he could do to fight them, and in a moment Síora held three rings cupped in her palm. Two were nearly the same as the rings she remembered Petrus wearing, made of the same cool, gray metal that had been woven into intricate designs. But the third… She knelt again by the fire to look at it in the light. It was made of stone, black volcanic rock. Its face was marked with tiny holes. It was more bulky than its brothers, and it should have weighed heavier in her hand. But instead it felt light—light and warm—as if it was somehow alive.</p><p>“What are they?” Oona nodded toward the rings.</p><p>“Weapons,” Síora said, looking up at her. “This is how the Mindshakers make their magic.” Oona turned to look over her shoulder at the bound men, and Síora stood, tucking the rings away in a pouch at her belt. “We will take them to Eseld,” she said.</p><p>It took no magic to tie the Mindshakers’ hands behind their backs with leather cords or cover their eyes so they could not flee. It was harder to guide them stumbling through the still-dark forest, but as the sun was rising, they led their prisoners down the hill into Vedrhaís.</p><p>Eseld opened her door to see the three men on their knees in the dirt before her. She blew out a forceful breath and looked up at Síora, her brows raised with a question she did not speak.</p><p>“We found them outside of díd e kíden nádaígeis,” Síora said. She nodded toward the man on the right. “He understands,” she said, to tell her sister to be careful with her words.</p><p>“What were they doing?” Eseld asked, and Síora shook her head. She had to suppress a shiver. Even though the sun had risen, the air was still frigid. Perhaps whatever spirits had come to them the night before were trying to reach them still, but there was no time to worry about that now. They had more solid worries bound here in the center of their village. She forced her arms to stay quiet by her sides and turned her attention to her sister.</p><p>Eseld went to stand in front of the third man, the one who could understand Yecht Fradí. She leaned down and tugged his blindfold away from his eyes, and when he looked up at her, clenching his jaw, she asked, “Why were you there at díd e kíden nádaígeis? What were you doing?”</p><p>He understood what she asked. His lips parted slightly, as if he might answer, but then he glanced toward the man beside him.</p><p>“He is your leader?” Eseld reached over and pulled the blindfold from the other man’s eyes. He was the man who had carried the stone ring, the one who had spoken to Síora by the fire. He lifted his head and glared at Eseld, and she smiled sharply back at him. She laughed under her breath as she stood and gestured for Síora to come forward. “Síora, ask him.”</p><p>Síora knelt in front of him, out of arm’s reach. His hands might be tied, but she had seen prisoners do reckless things to escape their bonds. “Why did you go to díd e kíden nádaígeis?” she asked in his tongue. She had not spoken the words of the renaígse in months, not since Vasco had left them to return to his ship. But they were still there in her mind. Perhaps they would always be there.</p><p>His face was pale, but his brows drew close together over his eyes. His voice shook with anger when he answered. “Go there—to the ruins? –We weren’t going there. We were traveling.” He looked over her shoulder to where Eseld stood. “We have done nothing wrong!”</p><p>Síora repeated the words he spoke in Yecht Fradí. Eseld understood the language of the renaígse nearly as well as she did, but the others who had gathered did not. And Eseld may not want to let the Mindshakers know that she understood them. “Tell him his life is wrong,” Eseld said.</p><p>“A sír…”</p><p>Eseld sighed. “Ask him where they were traveling to.”</p><p>When Síora did, the man answered, “By the grace of the Enlightened, off of this island.” Síora waited, and eventually he added, “We heard that the harbor at New Sérène is intact. We planned to wait for a ship to pass and signal the Nauts to come for us.”</p><p>The man to his left muttered something. “What did you say?” When he did not answer, she stood and reached over to pull off his blindfold. She repeated the question.</p><p>This man, too, looked toward the man in the middle, and only when his leader gave a short, tense nod did he speak. “If the demons are not in the city.” He glanced up at Síora, then back at his leader. “That is what I said.”</p><p>“Demons?”</p><p>“The former governor and his cousin.” The Mindshakers’ leader was watching her with hard eyes. “They are no longer human, if the woman ever was. They have entered into an unholy relationship with the abominations that guard the island, and it has given them demonic powers.”</p><p>These men never had tried to understand. The Mindshakers never had seen the Yecht Fradí as anything more than demon-worshippers, a misguided people that needed to be taught the right ways—their ways—by persuasion or force. Or trickery. What use was there in talking to them?</p><p>She turned to tell Eseld that the men should be taken away and held until they could decide their fate, but the look on her sister’s face stopped her. She was staring in the direction of the men, but her gaze was far away, thoughtful. When she noticed Síora looking at her, Eseld jerked her chin toward the prisoners and clicked her tongue, ordering Síora to continue.</p><p>Síora sighed but did as her sister commanded. She pulled the stone ring from her pouch and held it on her open palm in front of the Mindshakers’ leader. “What is this?” she asked.</p><p>He stared at the ring, his lips pressed together in a frown, and did not answer. She asked again, this time looking at the priest, who looked from the ring to her face, his eyes wide and frightened. Finally he spoke, flinching away from his leader when the man growled a warning at him. “It is a relic,” he said, “a ring worn by Saint Matheus himself—created by him, we believe.”</p><p>“It is of historical importance to Thélème, nothing more,” the leader added sharply.</p><p>Síora settled back on her heels. She closed her fingers around the ring and put it away again, watching their eyes as they followed her hand. It was not just a relic. She knew enough of the Mindshakers’ rings to know that. She repeated their words for those who couldn’t understand, then said, “Not more than that? …I think it is a weapon. It is one of your magic rings—but this one is different. Why?”</p><p>Silence, again. Even the priest would not speak when she looked at him. Behind her, Eseld said, “Tell them that if they help us, we may help them. We have the same enemy.”</p><p>She twisted to look up at her sister. “They are not our caranten, Eseld. How could we trust them? They—”</p><p>Eseld stopped her with a gesture, sweeping her hand in front of her. “They want what we want,” she said, “the usurpers dead. Once that is done, we will give them what they want—to leave our land. They will not trouble us again.”</p><p>Síora knew that she had lost the argument, but she said anyway, “They will want a promise, a sír.”</p><p>“Then promise it.”</p><p>She turned back to the men and leaned forward, her hands on her knees. It took time to find the words she wanted—or perhaps it was only that she did not want to speak them. “The usurpers,” she said, “the…demons you speak of. They have done something that we cannot forgive. They are our enemies.” She looked up to see that the leader’s expression had softened, wary surprise taking the place of anger and fear.</p><p>They would agree; they had to. “If your weapon can help us overthrow them,” she said, “we will help you return home.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Wow, sorry this chapter took me so long! There's been some Life happening lately.</p><p>I would have added notes after the last chapter, but I didn't want to come in with my usual blah, blah, blah after a really emotional scene with Kurt. (By the way, I just want to say for the record that Kurt is alive and well in my current playthrough and in a loving relationship with De Sardet.)</p><p>Also, I just started watching The Expanse, and Wes Chatham, who plays Amos, would make an amazing Kurt. --Universe, you gave us 2020, now it's time to give us a series adaptation of Greedfall (just sayin').</p><p>And some actual notes:</p><p>1. I went back to Lyfurn's <a href="http://www.archiveofourown.org/works/26622937/chapters/64916083">Project Yecht Fradí</a> a lot while I was writing this chapter. It's a great resource. Kudos to everyone who has put time into translating the conlang for us poor fanfic writers and the gamers who just want to know what the heck people are saying.</p><p>2. Cougreda, the cave of hearts, is a made up place. If I'm remembering right, we don't find any sacred caves or circles in Vedrad in the game. Let me know if I'm wrong about that, though!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Dorhadgenedu</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <i>Síora</i>
  </p>
</div><p>Fires dotted the hillside between Dorhadgenedu’s gate and the lake, their smoke rising and drifting over the water. So many had come—not only the kings, but many members of their clans. As the kings and their doneigada rose with the sun to go into the village, others remained around their fires or came with their kings up the hill. They would seek the path to Credhenes.</p>
<p>Síora and Eseld had watched people come down from the height of the mountain the evening before, when they had arrived in Dorhadgenedu, and Síora watched these others now as they began the journey. They walked through the gate, talking among themselves, smiling. They had brought their children with them. One man who passed her wore a strip of fabric tied around his forearm above his bracer. At first glance, she thought he was wounded; the strip was stained brown and stiff with dried blood. But then she saw the same fabric tied around the arms of others who passed, or tucked into their belts. It was a symbol, one that she did not understand.</p>
<p>“They forget the battle,” Eseld said beside her. She had turned away from the gate and was gazing out over the hillside and the fires, her arms crossed over her chest. Síora followed her gaze. The hillside had grown green with the winter rains, but in some places the grass grew over uneven ground, the many footprints of the armies that had passed this way, the army of the usurper’s creatures and the army that De Sardet had gathered. And some of the clans’ fires burned over the ashes of that army’s fires, De Sardet’s camp fire.</p>
<p>There had been no sign of De Sardet or the usurper yet.</p>
<p>Eseld spoke again. “Arwant says a story is being told, that en on míl frichtimen was once a man, and that the usurpers were chosen by the land.”</p>
<p>Síora turned to meet Eseld’s eyes. “But that is not true! Who…”</p>
<p>“Who would create a story like that?” Eseld asked, when Síora trailed off. “The Cengeden Anedas. –It was Valan who told Arwant the story.”</p>
<p>The people who walked the path to Credhenes, they had accepted the new spirits of the island. They were happy. They had forgotten how the usurper came to power.
No—they hadn’t forgotten. They believed that the usurper and De Sardet had been chosen to overthrow en on míl frichtimen and drive away the renaígse, and Derdre and her clan were nurturing that belief. Síora reached for the pouch at her belt that held the rings she had taken from the Mindshakers. She closed her hand over it until she felt the rings digging into her palm.</p>
<p>“Derdre is still with them,” Síora said.</p>
<p>“We will see.” Eseld left her side and started for the gate. “Come, it is time.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>The council house was dark, lit only by the fires that burned in their pots. Eseld found a place near the head of the room, where Dunncas would stand, beside the new màl of the Vegaíg Awelas, a man with locks of brown hair in a crest atop his head and sad eyes. He was not a doneigad or even on ol menawí; but then, Wenshavarr had not had a doneigad since Vinbarr had died. Síora stood behind her sister, close to the wall, and looked around at those who had gathered. Derdre was there, almost directly across from Eseld. She would stand at Dunnas’s left hand when the High King arrived. Ullan waited in the light that fell through the open door, opposite the High King’s place. It was as though he wanted to send the message, just by where he stood, that the màl of the Sisaig Cnameis would not go with the High King in everything. Perhaps she saw such things because she knew Ullan.</p>
<p>Beside Ullan sat Slan, doneigad of his clan, on one of the ledges that lined the room. That was strange. The doneigada did not take part in the council unless they also were the màl of their clans. They were witnesses and may be called upon to give meaning to the signs of en on míl frichtimen, but they did not take part in the debates between clans. Síora had attended the council only three times since her mother had died—Eseld had broken with tradition to ask her to take Arwant’s place—but she had not yet seen a doneigad take a place in the council circle.</p>
<p>Slan’s face was turned toward the open door. She sat with her hands resting on the ledge and her shoulders slumped. Perhaps it was only that she was old, and tired from the journey.</p>
<p>Ullan caught her eye. He raised his hand palm up and bowed his head to her, as one would to a tiern, but when he lifted his head again, he was smiling. It was a sharp-eyed smile. Síora looked away before she could think how to respond and saw Eseld looking in Ullan’s direction. Her sister gave him a short nod and turned away. These things, the moves to make in the contests between kings, came so easily to Eseld.</p>
<p>Others came in, Daren and other leaders of the doneia esgregaw, now màl in their own rights, and the màl of the northern clans, who had come through their secret passes. They had relied upon the mountain’s spine and high cliffs on their coasts to keep their lands out of the reach of the renaígse. Dunncas still had not come.</p>
<p>The crackling of the fires and low murmur of conversation lulled her thoughts, and at first Síora did not see the two who came in together, casting shadows on the floor. It was Eseld who caught her attention as she suddenly broke off talking with the woman to her left to look toward the door. Her hand closed in a fist.</p>
<p>A tall, broad shouldered man with yellow hair and a tangle of branches atop his head stood with his back toward her. He wore the leather tunic and obsidian of a Yecht Fradí warrior, and she could see the shadow of his mark on his cheek and throat. But he was not one of their own. The usurper, the mad prince. A woman knelt beside him, partially out of Síora’s sight, and the usurper rested his hand lightly on the back of her head, as if he could not be apart from her. De Sardet.</p>
<p>They had paused in front of Ullan and Slan, and De Sardet held both of Slan’s hands in her own. Síora could not see her face, but she heard Slan answer something that De Sardet had said, her voice as soft and raspy as the wind through reeds.</p>
<p>The usurper looked toward the door and then bent down to say something to De Sardet, and she let him help her up. She still wore the clothing of the Congregation, the blue coat with gold braiding along the hem, the white cloth wrapped and tied around her neck, the dark trousers and boots, and the metal cuirass enclosing her chest. The coat looked just the same as the coat Síora knew had been torn to pieces. She wore no hat or helmet; those would not fit over the crown of branches on her head. But every other detail of her uniform was the way Síora remembered it.</p>
<p>Why did she dress as a renaígse still? De Sardet had been given a tiern’s robe. She had wrapped it in paper and kept it folded in a chest in the house… But the house must have burned in the fires in New Sérène.</p>
<p>Even so, Ullan or Slan, or another of her supporters, would have given her a robe. Why would she come to Dorhadgenedu dressed as a renaígse?</p>
<p>As De Sardet turned, her eyes found Síora where she stood in the fitful light from the fire. Their eyes met, and De Sardet paused. Síora did not see what expression might have crossed her face or if she opened her mouth to speak; she turned away. But in front of her, Eseld hissed through her teeth. When Síora turned back, the usurper and De Sardet had taken places against the wall behind Ullan and Slan.</p>
<p>“Do they mean not to speak?” Eseld murmured in front of her.</p>
<p>Síora leaned toward her sister. “If De Sardet wants her caranten to come…” she said slowly. She glanced toward De Sardet, who had bent her head toward the usurper as if she was listening to something he said, though neither one spoke. “They will have to speak. Ullan may wish to ally himself again with the renaígse, but the other màl will speak against it.”</p>
<p>Eseld nodded.</p>
<p>“De Sardet will wait for Dunncas to ask her to speak,” Síora said. “She will not want to seem to step out of place.”</p>
<p>Eseld laughed once, a sharp exhale. Síora knew what her sister thought. The usurpers’ place was not here. They lay betrayal upon betrayal, first murdering en on míl frichtimen, then seeking to bring their allies to the island to strengthen their hold on Tír Fradí.</p>
<p>She glanced at Derdre. Where Derdre went, the doneia egsgregaw and many of the others would follow. She could convince Dunncas to stand against the usurpers.</p>
<p>Síora straightened and felt a shock of cold air on her right hand and cheek. The spirit—it was here. It had come with De Sardet. In Vedrhais, she had thought the spirits needed her help, that something kept them from returning to the earth. But that was wrong. De Sardet had power over them somehow. De Sardet could visit Tír Anemen; perhaps she could control the spirits of the dead.</p>
<p>The cold withdrew as soon as she’d noticed it and turned her head, as if she might see the light from the other land and another ghostly face hanging in the air. But the chill of her thoughts stayed with her. De Sardet was using the spirits of the dead as her spies. She was keeping them there, so they could not be free of their deaths.</p>
<p>Dunncas came into the council house before Síora could share her thoughts with her sister. He crossed the circle without pausing, two of the guards following behind him. In a moment, he had taken his place—a moment in which no one spoke and all eyes watched him—then he looked around at all who had gathered, his face solemn beneath his crown. He seemed even to see Síora where she stood just beyond the light of the fire.</p>
<p>“You know why you have come,” Dunncas said simply, opening his hands to gesture to the gathered kings. “What do you have to say about this idea of allying ourselves with the Nauts?”</p>
<p>Derdre spoke almost before Dunncas had finished, and Síora’s heart leapt. “We do not need their friendship.”</p>
<p>“Perhaps not,” Dunncas replied, nodding. “Our enemies have left our lands. But Rhíenna tells me that they will return if we do not make a show of strength.”</p>
<p>Rhíenna? Síora was not the only one who caught the unfamiliar name. Others around the circle searched the faces around them for this stranger or murmured to their kin.</p>
<p>“Do you speak for the renaígse, Dunncas?” Daren’s voice was high and angry.</p>
<p>At the same time, Derdre said, “We have our own strength. We do not need theirs.”</p>
<p>Across the council house, Ullan began to speak but stopped himself when Dunncas turned to Daren. “I speak so we may look at all sides.” He looked out over the circle. “We are one clan among many. We cannot close our eyes to the renaígse. If we do, they will return, and we may become renaígse in our own land.”</p>
<p>Silence followed his words. At Dunncas’s side, Derdre searched the faces of the other màl. She paused when she turned to Eseld, and Síora asked Derdre in her thoughts to speak again. Finally, Derdre turned to Dunncas. “We can guard our lands. We can make weapons like the weapons of the renaígse. The Cengeden Anedas have gone to their cities; we will learn their secrets.”</p>
<p>“Will you make us like them, Derdre?” Ullan asked. Derdre turned to him, her eyes bright and sharp as an obsidian knife. Ullan was so eager to welcome the renaígse and ally himself with the usurper and De Sardet. Why would he ask such a question?</p>
<p>“Do you know what we will have to trade to have what they have?” he continued. He stood at his ease beneath Derdre’s fierce stare, his hands in the gesture of prayer that he seemed to take up out of habit. He kept his eyes on her as he spoke. “The renaígse brought their fine weapons from their land. They have mines, many more than the mines they dug here, and craftsmen in their cities to make their guns and swords. And all the renaígse that came to Tír Fradí were just a few of their full number.</p>
<p>“Where are our mines and our cities, Derdre? Where are our people? –Our people, our cengedan, are dead.”</p>
<p>“Not all,” Derdre answered, but the heat had gone out of her words.</p>
<p>“But too many.”</p>
<p>Síora watched as Ullan’s words settled on the gathered kings. She watched their faces change as they looked from Ullan to Derdre and to Dunncas.</p>
<p>Finally, one of the northern kings spoke. His face was painted with two black streaks under each eye and a row of black points across each cheekbone from his nose to his ears, and he wore a feather cloak over his shoulders. He was of the clan of the cold teeth that lived high on the northern slopes of the mountain, where sometimes the rain fell from the sky as ice. “You forget the power of our land. The nádaig will drive the renaígse back into the sea, as the first nádaig did.”</p>
<p>Eseld’s shoulders tensed a moment before she answered him. “Our ancestors are dead,” she said. “The renaígse killed all they could find.” She turned to eye the other king. “The ones who did not fight should not speak.”</p>
<p>Some approved of Eseld’s words. Derdre looked at her, nodding. Daren bared her teeth in a smile, and her brother màl of the eastern doneia egsgregaw band leaned toward her to pass some remark in a low voice.</p>
<p>Síora cast a glance toward De Sardet, ready to look away if she met her eyes. But De Sardet was distracted. She had turned toward the usurper as if they were talking with each other, but their lips did not move. The usurper wrapped a hand around De Sardet’s arm, bending his head toward her, and she nodded before she looked away, toward the center of the circle and Síora.</p>
<p>Síora turned in time to see Dunncas raise his hand. When the kings fell silent, he asked, “Will you speak, Rhíenna?” He was looking at De Sardet.</p>
<p>She hesitated, but after a moment she answered in Yecht Fradí. “I will, if you ask it of me.”</p>
<p>Dunncas nodded and gestured for her to come into the center of the circle, as Síora had done moons ago when Dunncas had asked her to tell the story of the battle and her vision of De Sardet in Tír Anemen. She seemed to see that vision again as De Sardet came forward. Instead of her coat and cuirass, she was clothed in white flames that covered her from her shoulders to her wrists and calves and twined through her dark hair. Her blue eyes were unnaturally bright, and the light that came from her seemed to sap all the color from the faces and tunics of the ones who had gathered.</p>
<p>Síora closed her eyes. The earth swooped under her feet like a bird in the air.</p>
<p>Almost she fell backward when Eseld’s hand grasped her wrist. “Síora,” Eseld whispered. Her sister’s fingers closed hard on her skin. Síora opened her eyes to see De Sardet standing below them in the center of the circle, facing Dunncas and Derdre. Now she wore a simple leather tunic, a tracker’s tunic, undyed. Her hair was braided in rows along her scalp. There was no sign of the flames, and the light in the room came from the fire pots and was warm and soft. De Sardet had turned too far away from them for Síora to see her face, but her eyes must have lost their otherworldly brightness.</p>
<p>Eseld looked at her with a silent question in her eyes. The others sat quietly, listening. Some listened with hard faces, but when she looked around at them, none looked surprised or afraid. No one else had seen what she had seen.</p>
<p>Had De Sardet appeared this way to them the entire time, as Yecht Fradí, one of their people? Even now as Síora took her eyes away from her to look around the room, the tunic De Sardet wore seemed as unreal and shifting as a shadow. One moment it appeared as warm brown leather, trimmed in fur; the next it appeared blue, and gold embroidery caught the light of the fire.</p>
<p>Síora twisted her hand to close her fingers over Eseld’s. Her hand shook. Sweat was cooling on her skin.</p>
<p>“What has happened to you?” Eseld asked.</p>
<p>Síora wanted to lean against Eseld, but she would not. “A vision,” she said. Eseld frowned at her, but Síora shook her head. She could not say more now; De Sardet was speaking.</p>
<p>“…The Nauts are not like the other…clans—nations, in the tongue of the renaígse—of the continent,” De Sardet was saying. She had turned to face different quarters of the circle as she spoke, and now she faced the door of the council house with her back and right shoulder toward Síora and Eseld. “They are not a nation. They have very little land because their…power is in their ships, and their understanding of the sea.” She hesitated over some of the words, but her understanding of Yecht Fradí had grown much beyond her skills in the time that Síora had traveled with her.</p>
<p>“They have their island, like Tír Fradí, but smaller, and land that they control in other nations by the water. They held land in each of the renaígse cities that were once on the island, and that is all the land they will ask of you.” She turned again so that Síora could see her face. “If you ally yourselves with the Nauts, they will want trade to build their wealth. They may use your friendship to shelter themselves from conflict with the Saul Lasser, the Lugeid Blau, and the Lions—as the Yecht Fradí would do.” She paused, and turned back toward Dunncas as she added, “They may ask for some of your children, to build their numbers.”</p>
<p>A murmur of concern went around the circle at that. Dunncas raised a hand to quell it, but Síora saw the concern on his face as well. Had he not known? De Sardet spread her hands in acknowledgement, and continued, “It seems cruel. And in many cases, the…promises the Nauts made with their caranten on the continent were cruel. But there may be some in your clans, who are old enough to choose, who would choose a life at sea…who would love it.</p>
<p>“–I tell you this,” she said, looking at Derdre, then turning to look around at those who sat on the other end of the room, “so that you know what to ask for, and what promises to make. The choice belongs to you. But you must choose your friends; you cannot stand alone in the world.”</p>
<p>For a moment after she stopped speaking, the kings and their doneigada stood unmoving and silent around the circle as if under some strange magic. The power of her voice held even when she had finished. Síora’s hand found the rings in their pouch, the rough face of the stone ring, and she caught it in her fingers as she looked toward the back of the room where the usurper stood. He was looking at De Sardet and smiling. Síora had never seen such warmth in his eyes. She had not seen his face during the battle in Vígnámrí, and now she saw that magic or a cure had taken the scars from his skin, except for the mark of the bond he had stolen. He was a tall, golden man—one that others would follow.</p>
<p>She turned the stone ring between her fingers, and as she did, the usurper’s gaze rose and found her like a thrown spear. She looked away, and met De Sardet’s eyes. De Sardet stood, tense, one hand clenched in a fist at her side. She looked at Síora for a moment before she turned to Dunncas.</p>
<p>“That is all I would say, màl,” she said. Her voice had changed. It was strung tight, and strained, and as she spoke, she took a step backward and toward the other side of the room, away from Síora.</p>
<p>Dunncas nodded and raised his hand, palm up, to thank and dismiss her, and De Sardet left the circle, returning to the usurper’s side. Again he bent his head toward her, and she glanced up at him. She shook her head.</p>
<p>They were speaking with their thoughts somehow. He was her minundhanem. There were stories told of minundhanem who knew each other’s minds, each other’s thoughts, but though Síora believed there was some truth in them, she had never believed it possible to share thoughts one mind to another.</p>
<p>Dunncas’s voice pulled her back. He had stood to address the council before any others could speak. “Now is a time to think and meditate,” he said. Derdre shifted as if she would say something, but the High King stilled her with a shake of his head. “Meditate on what was said here today,” he repeated. “Speak to your kin. There will be time for all voices to be heard and all questions to be answered.”</p>
<p>With that, he stepped down from the ledge where he had been sitting and crossed the floor. The guards opened the doors to let him pass, and light flooded in, shocking her eyes as if they had forgotten the sun.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>The cool air on her face was a relief. She could not stay in the council house any longer, not with both of their eyes on her. Eseld had gone to speak with Derdre the moment Dunncas had left, and Síora had let her go alone. She hoped her sister would understand when she explained herself later. Síora could not say why, but she felt that if they looked at her too long, they would know—about the ring, about their plans. Their eyes would look behind her face and take all of her secrets, even the ones she kept from Eseld. When Ullan and several others among the kings had surrounded them with greetings and questions, Síora had fled, keeping to the shadows until she reached the door.</p>
<p>She had not left the village before she heard a voice calling her name. Aidan stood on the path that led behind the council house. He had cupped his hands around his mouth so she would hear him.</p>
<p>Síora glanced back, but no others had left the council house yet. She found the path and stopped beside Aidan where he stood looking up the slope. The path to Credhenes was empty now; the ones who had gone to the sanctuary in the morning had returned or were lingering there.</p>
<p>“You want to go to Credhenes?” she asked, looking at him. His face was determined, as if he had already set his mind to go, but he did not move.</p>
<p>“I have never been.”</p>
<p>“What is holding you back?”</p>
<p>He hesitated for a moment, then said, “It isn’t how it was, when en on míl frichtimen was alive.”</p>
<p>Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him turn to look at her. Síora looked up the path. The last time she had come this way, the earth had been torn by the feet of an army of creatures, and Síora had been with her companions. De Sardet had had a look on her face like death that day.</p>
<p>“We will go,” Síora said. She did not know what had made her decide, suddenly, without thought—only that perhaps it was because Credhenes was different now. She wanted to see what the usurpers had done to the sanctuary. She did not tell herself that it was because seeing it might turn her doubts to certainty.</p>
<p>Aidan studied her for a moment, then nodded. “Adlorhedar,” he said in a low voice, and she knew it cost him something to say it—not because he felt he needed to thank her but because he felt he’d been too weak to go to the sanctuary on his own.</p>
<p>“I should thank you,” Síora said. “I would not go on my own.”</p>
<p>Aidan did not acknowledge the words, but some of the tension in him eased. He started up the path, but Síora did not follow.</p>
<p>“Wait,” she said, looking back toward the door of the council house.</p>
<p>“What is it?”</p>
<p>“I need Eseld.” Her sister was not there, but Síora saw her farther down the slope, walking back through the village in the direction of their camp. “Wait here,” she said, as she started after her.</p>
<p>De Sardet’s spy must follow her. Even though she had not felt the cold since that moment in the council house, she knew he would be somewhere nearby. The spirit was more cautious now. But it would not matter if he saw, not if Eseld and the Gaís Rad were wakeful.</p>
<p>Síora called her sister’s name and Eseld turned, pausing only a moment in surprise before she opened her mouth to scold her.  Síora did not give her the chance. She grabbed her sister’s wrist and pressed her belt pouch into her hand.</p>
<p>Eseld’s fingers closed around the pouch. “What—”</p>
<p>“Keep them safe,” Síora said, close to her sister’s ear. “Stay awake until I return. –Stay with other clans; bring them close, to our camp. Bring the Cengeden Anedas.” If the spy wanted to hear her words, she would not make it easy for him. She felt the cold of the spirit on her back and forced herself not to shiver or show any sign.</p>
<p>“Where are you going?”</p>
<p>“To Credhenes.” Before Eseld could protest, Síora stepped away. “I will come back tonight.”</p>
<p>“Wait—” Eseld followed her and caught Síora’s arm. “Derdre will not go against the High King, if he decides to ally with the Nauts.”</p>
<p>The words found a hollow space inside Síora and settled there. They seemed to echo in her.</p>
<p>“We fight alone,” Eseld said.</p>
<p>Síora shook her head. “No,” she said, and there was a fierceness in the word that surprised even her. Eseld’s grip loosened, and she stared at Síora. “Not alone. Do what Dunncas asked us to do—talk to people of the other clans. There are others who feel as we do. I know it. They will join us.”</p>
<p>Eseld searched her eyes for a moment before she nodded. Síora let her go, and she backed away, tucking the pouch with the rings beneath her belt. “Do not stay away long, Síora,” she said before she turned to stride down the hill, toward their camp. Síora watched her go until she had passed through Dorhadgenedu’s gate, then she went back to Aidan.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>They walked through a forest. Dead leaves crackled under their feet and more still remained on the trees, rattling sometimes in gusts of air that should not have been possible inside the sanctuary. The trees’ canopies stretched far above their heads. That, too, should not have been possible. How had they grown so quickly?</p>
<p>Síora pushed on toward the back of the cavern. She had just reached the edge of the trees, when Aidan called her back. He had paused to kneel over a pile of rags on the ground. No—not rags, she saw as she came closer. It was clothing. Aidan held up a bit of dirty cloth, and Síora could make out half of a stiff collar, the seams of the neckline, and a short row of button holes.</p>
<p>“It’s been torn,” Aidan said, running his fingers down one ragged edge of the cloth. He looked up at her. “The badges—this is where they come from.” So Aidan too had noticed the cloth strips some wore.</p>
<p>“It is renaígse clothing,” Síora said heavily, “their clothing.” Those who came to the sanctuary were taking badges to show their faith in the new spirits, or perhaps to gain their favor. For a moment, she thought to burn the scraps that were left. But even if they did set fire to the pile, the people’s beliefs would not be changed, not unless they or the usurpers changed it through action.</p>
<p>“Come,” she said, already turning for the back of the sanctuary, “he is this way.”</p>
<p>Síora heard Aidan’s swift intake of breath when they left the trees and he saw the great tree standing beyond them all. The usurpers may have grown a forest in Credhenes, but they could not match en on míl frichtimen, even in death. The tree’s roots still stretched down, buried in massive cracks in the sanctuary’s floor, each as wide around as a full-grown tree of the forest. Leaves still clung to the highest branches. But there was no light in the tree’s bark, and the air no longer pulled at her. The god’s presence was gone.</p>
<p>How could she have done this?</p>
<p>Aidan stepped forward, his eyes still on the branches above his head as he approached a root that sprawled close to them.</p>
<p>Síora dragged in a deep breath and forced herself to ignore the sting of tears in her eyes. Her voice, when she spoke, almost was steady. “I came here only once, with De Sardet,” she said. Aidan had reached the root and stretched out a hand to touch the bark. Now he turned to look at her.</p>
<p>“There was life in the tree,” she continued, looking up at the vast trunk, “as if it might move. And there was life in the air.” She raised one arm a little away from her side, remembering how she had felt she might be pulled off of the ground, into the highest branches. “His presence was larger than the sanctuary. –We heard his voice sometimes in other sacred places.”</p>
<p>En on míl frichtimen had warned them of what would happen if the deathbringer, the usurper, brought his plans to fruit. And De Sardet had gone with the usurper in spite of those warnings.</p>
<p>Aidan was facing the middle of the sanctuary and saw the Nádaíg baro before Síora did. He had opened his mouth to reply but caught his breath instead. “Look,” he said, nodding. He stepped slowly away from the root and came to her side.</p>
<p>Síora turned. The Nádaíg was crouched between them and the trees. Its face with its bark-like skin and hanging moss looked like a tree itself. Somehow such a massive creature had approached within several strides of them without giving a sign. It watched them quietly, unmoving.</p>
<p>Something else moved in the guardian’s shadow, and De Sardet stepped out of the shelter of one hulking arm. Síora had not seen her there a moment before.</p>
<p>She tensed, and felt Aidan tense beside her. She caught his arm before he could reach for his sword. “What do you see?” she murmured.</p>
<p>He glanced at her quickly before turning back to De Sardet, who had stopped as soon as they had seen her. “The usurper,” he answered, the words clipped and strained.</p>
<p>“How does she look?”</p>
<p>He shook his head. “What—” But when she looked at him and met his eyes, he said, “Like a renaígse. Like she always has.”</p>
<p>Was it magic that made De Sardet seem blurred and indistinct to Síora’s eyes? Or was it a waking vision, the same that she had had in the council house? De Sardet stood at the edge of the trees, her hands open to show that she carried no blade, though they all knew she had other weapons. The branches atop her head seemed real one moment and a shadow the next. Síora blinked and they appeared to be growing out of De Sardet’s tricorn hat. Her clothes flickered inconsistently like fire, brown tunic and blue coat, or sometimes the white flames that were empty of all color. Her face was solemn, her eyes dark in the Nádaig’s shadow.</p>
<p>Síora narrowed her eyes and cast her gaze down a little and to one side. She did not see De Sardet move. But she must have moved—suddenly Síora stood in Tír Anemen. The Nádaig baro blazed white as bone before her. De Sardet had not moved from in front of it, but her fires were obscured by the glare coming off its body. The crowns of the trees beyond them were on fire. And Síora’s body lay at her feet, beside Aidan. De Sardet had cast them both into sleep, so quickly that Síora had not seen her do it.</p>
<p>Síora’s hand was on the hilt of her sword. It felt the same in her palm, though it must be as much a shadow of itself as her spirit. Could such a blade do anything to De Sardet? Could any weapon, if she could put any enemy who came against her to sleep?</p>
<p>But De Sardet wanted to talk, not to fight. That was why she had brought Síora here.</p>
<p>“What do you have to say?” Síora demanded. She stood straight, lowering her hand to rest by her side. She would not show any fear.</p>
<p>De Sardet looked her over, and for a moment she seemed uncertain. Finally she said, “I’ve come to ask you to let the Mindshakers go…and your plan with them.”</p>
<p>So it was as Síora had thought. De Sardet had sent the spirits as her spies. “Where are they, your spies?” She searched the cavern as she spoke but saw no sign of the spirits.</p>
<p>“They’ve returned to the city, most of them. They won’t trouble Vedhrais again.”</p>
<p>“Why do you not return them to the earth? You know it is wrong not to.”</p>
<p>De Sardet laughed under her breath. She glanced to one side as she answered. “I do. They’ll return when they are ready.</p>
<p>“Síora.” De Sardet looked at her again and stepped forward slowly, coming closer. “We haven’t attacked your clan—and we won’t, not if you stand down. …I’m offering you peace.”</p>
<p>How many times would they speak the same words to each other? Síora shook her head. She swept her arm to the side, encompassing the great tree, the body of en on míl frichtimen, that towered over them. “This was not an offering of peace.”</p>
<p>Eseld was right. Though the Nádaig had been healed and the land nurtured new creatures since the usurpers had taken Credhenes, those things could not undo the first great wound they had caused.</p>
<p>While Síora spoke, De Sardet glanced down. It was quick, but she looked at Síora’s body in the world of the living. At her belt.</p>
<p>“They are not with me,” Síora said. Her heart beat faster at the thought that she had guessed what De Sardet would do. Somehow De Sardet had known about the rings; she wanted them.</p>
<p>It must be the stone ring. It wasn’t only different in its face, then, but in some power that it held.</p>
<p>De Sardet studied her face for a moment. “Where are they?”</p>
<p>“Will you keep me here if I do not tell you?” Síora asked. De Sardet said nothing, only stood and watched her.</p>
<p>Maybe it was not a good idea to say what she had done. But Síora wanted De Sardet to know that she had been out-maneuvered, as the renaígse said. “The ring is with Eseld,” she said, watching for De Sardet’s reaction. She showed no sign of surprise or confusion that Síora had mentioned only one ring. “In our camp. Our allies are there, and others from other clans. If you try to take it, they will know you for what you truly are, and they will become your enemies, too.”</p>
<p>De Sardet did not speak for a moment, and when she did, her face was drawn, pained. “Síora.” She took a step closer but stopped when Síora again put her hand on her sword hilt. “I know you cannot forgive me, but think of the cost of what you are doing. You can end this now, and no one else will die.”</p>
<p>“No,” Síora answered. “It only ends with two deaths.”</p>
<p>Something changed in De Sardet’s face. The tense lines across her brow eased. She set her jaw. Maybe she finally understood.</p>
<p>Then the air moved at De Sardet’s shoulder. Síora might have thought that she had dreamed it, but De Sardet turned and spoke to the emptiness beside her. “Will you talk to her?”</p>
<p>And the air answered her. “Is that a good idea?”</p>
<p>Síora knew that voice. It was the voice of the spirit. Even in Tír Anemen, Síora could not see him, except as a shift of the air, the suggestion of a body. She could see her own hand clearly, the lines of her knuckles, the shapes of her nails, but she could not see who it was who stood beside De Sardet. But she knew that voice.</p>
<p>De Sardet nodded and turned again to Síora. The air blurred and bent around the spirit as he came toward her. Finally, she was able to make out the lines of his face and the scars that marked it.</p>
<p>She took a step back, narrowing her eyes, trying to find him against the dark sky and the shifting light of the fires. “Kurt?”</p>
<p>“It’s me, little flower.” He sounded weary.</p>
<p>“How are you here, still?”</p>
<p>He laughed then, and it was the same bark of a laugh that she remembered, but hollow, empty. There was no force of living breath behind it. “That’s a question for a priest. –Or a doneígad. I don’t remember having a say in where I ended up.”</p>
<p>“But,” she started, going toward him before she realized what she was doing, “You shouldn’t be here, Kurt. You…” How could she say that he should not exist now, in the state he was in? “You should be a part of everything, returned to the earth.</p>
<p>“…There was no one to complete the rituals for you.” The weight of the words fell on her at the same time that she said them. No one had prepared Kurt’s body or said the proper words over him, so that his spirit could go into the soul of all things and be reborn. Was that why his spirit was so much more tenuous than her own? Because he had been in Tír Anemen for so long?</p>
<p>“Stop, Síora.” She felt a touch on her arm and looked down to see the hollows in the fabric of her tunic where his fingers pressed into her sleeve. His grip loosened for just a moment before he held onto her more tightly. His chest did not rise and fall, but he paused as if he’d taken a breath. “I want to be here. De Sardet tried to send me on, but I wouldn’t let her.”</p>
<p>Síora’s eyes found his. “Why?”</p>
<p>“You know the answer to that.”</p>
<p>He looked at her without turning away, and his hand still was wrapped around her arm. And Síora did know the answer. She had been there that day in the great hall in New Sérène, when Kurt had turned against the Lugeid Blau and fought De Sardet. He had caught her by surprise and might have killed her, but he had turned her gun on himself. He might have killed the usurper that day and saved their island without any of them knowing what he did.</p>
<p>Saved it from one evil fate. But what kind of renaígse was Kurt’s master? If he was a man who would turn on his caranten, what would he have done to her people? All renaígse were dangerous, even this man who had been her friend.</p>
<p>She was the one who looked away. She shook her head. “You are sorry for what you did,” she said. “But do you know what she has done?” She looked past Kurt to see De Sardet at the side of the Nádaig. She ran her hands over the guardian’s rough skin, and it turned its great head to follow her movements. If she could hear Síora and Kurt from that distance, she gave no sign.</p>
<p>“I do,” Kurt said. “She told me.”</p>
<p>“She told you how she betrayed us, her companions? She led Petrus and Aphra to die! And she and the usurper killed en on míl frichtimen, who had promised to help all of your people. After that, you are her carants still?”</p>
<p>Síora did not hide her anger, and Kurt stood silent and unmoving in the face of it. She took her arm back, and he let her go. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. “She betrayed my people.”</p>
<p>Kurt waited, watching her, but when she said nothing else, he spoke. “Yes, I’m still her friend–as much as I can claim that. Hey—” He held up a hand when she would have turned away. “Let me get this out.</p>
<p>“I understand what she’s going through. Loyalty…” He paused, glanced down, before he found her eyes again and forced her to meet his. “Giving your loyalty to more than one faction is asking to fail. At some point, you have to choose. And someone has to be first.</p>
<p>“Constantin is first for her. He always has been.”</p>
<p>“Then why would she lead an army to face him?” Síora asked.</p>
<p>Kurt laughed again but stopped when he saw the look on her face. When he spoke his voice was gentle, though his words had a rough edge to them. “You’re asking the dead man? –I don’t know, little flower; I wasn’t there.”</p>
<p>“If you had been, maybe things would have been different.”</p>
<p>“Maybe,” he echoed. “But one soldier isn’t going to stop a war.” She could just make out the lines of his frown.</p>
<p>“You are not only a soldier to her.”</p>
<p>Because she was watching his face so closely, she saw his lips twist into something closer to a smile, but he said nothing. “Why are you here, Kurt?”</p>
<p>“To help her try to stop this war.” He looked at her, and she thought he would have sighed if he could have taken a breath. He took a step forward. He touched her again, his hand finding her upper arm. “She doesn’t want it, Síora. You saw what happened at díd e kíden nádaígeis. You have a chance to avoid all of that death; take it.”</p>
<p>“You assume we cannot win.”</p>
<p>“I was in Vedrhais. I know how many warriors you have.”</p>
<p>Síora shook her head. She thought to step away, but in the end, she did not move. Maybe she felt pity for him, trapped in Tír Anemen, whether it was his choice or not. Whatever the reason, she would not shake him off if he reached out to her. But neither would she abandon their plans. “I know she is afraid of it, Cengots.” She meant the ring. “We can win. That is why she tries so hard to stop it.</p>
<p>“You speak of loyalty,” she added, looking him in the eye, “that her loyalty made her act as she did. –I am loyal to my sister, our clan. I left them once, and my mother died for it.</p>
<p>“I won’t leave them again.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>1. If it seems like Lily forgot about the whole "give us your children!" part of being friends with the Nauts, it's because her author completely did. But that led to a fun thinking on her feet moment in the middle of her speech. And yes, she was thinking of Vasco then. :)</p>
<p>2. "Adlorhedar" means thank you according to Lyfurn's <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26622937/chapters/64916083">Project Yecht Fradi</a>, which is pretty much always open in my browser.</p>
<p>3. Sometimes I go back into the game for research, and this time when I went to go harass the villagers in Wenshavarr and lurk around in Glendan's house (the council house), I remembered just how beautiful the game is. I noticed things I'd never noticed before, and now I just want to take a walk, enjoy the scenery, and leave fighting the tenlans to Kurt and Vasco.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Hero</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <i>Lily</i>
  </p>
</div><p><i>They killed the </i>Nádaig<i> of Cousoneigad when they stole the ring.</i></p>
<p>
  <i>How?</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Poison. Hidden in an offering.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>…I’m sorry, Constantin. I thought they might try, but…</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Not that they would succeed? …Neither did I. We’ve underestimated them, their talents for murder. It would be laughable how much we’ve underestimated them, except—</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Constantin. What else?</i>
</p>
<p><i>…I spoke with Eugenia. The ring is in one of the saint’s murals. It shows the old man in the mountain reaching out to touch the ring on Saint Matheus’s hand as he’s praying. She thinks that </i>en on míl frichtimen<i> blessed the ring.</i></p>
<p>
  <i>That explains why it is different.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Partially. But that doesn’t tell us why it harms you and not me. …Lily?</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Eseld and Síora are traveling back to Vedhrais. They have warriors from other clans with them, at least six clans that I’ve counted. One of them is always awake and has the ring, and they have other guards with them. They know it is their best weapon.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>How can we take it?</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>…I don’t think we can.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>What are you saying? We can’t leave it in their hands! Lily—we don’t know what it will do to you.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>I can’t get close enough to steal it. If we take it by force, their allies will take the story back to their clans. It would turn others against us.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>But Eseld and Síora would no longer hold a threat over our heads.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>These are our people now, Constantin. We can’t attack them out of hand. They haven’t done anything to us.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Yet. This time. …If it was anyone other than Síora, would you hesitate?</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>…I would try to find another way. I have tried to find another way.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>But now…</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>We wait.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>And make sure you survive.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>And make sure we both survive.</i>
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>The wind blew in from the sea, pushing Constantin’s hair back from his face. He narrowed his eyes against the occasional sting of blown sand. He had waited here with me, not saying anything, while our shadows grew in front of us and the boat slowly drew closer.</p>
<p>“Thank you,” I said, reaching out to take his hand.</p>
<p>He turned to look at me, raising his brows. “For what?”</p>
<p>“I know you don’t like this.” I smiled wryly at him. “But thank you for waiting with me all the same.”</p>
<p>“Am I that obvious?” He met my eyes for a moment before he laughed and turned back toward the sea and the boat. “I suppose I am. I’ve been wishing that boat and the ship away since we arrived.”</p>
<p>The boat had reached the first lines of breaking waves that lay offshore, and its single occupant steered it skillfully through the rocky shoal that we could just see. Farther offshore, the Trident rested at anchor. The ship had been there for several days, while a delegation of Yecht Fradí carried the clans’ terms of alliance out in the Sisaig Cnameis’s hide boats and those terms had been negotiated and settled on. I knew what the original terms had been; I had helped create them. The final terms would have been written on bark in symbols I could not read by a promise keeper in the delegation and would be carved into stone. I hoped that my ideas for offering youth a one-year apprenticeship at sea when they reached the age of fourteen, followed by a permanent contract only if they desired it, had been kept. The Nauts might think it too much a risk, but perhaps they would see the benefit of taking willing apprentices. So many of them had been Sea-given themselves.</p>
<p>But I would have to wait until I could see Dunncas again to learn what had happened. When the delegation returned to the island, they brought word that my request had been answered and that a boat would be allowed ashore the evening of the third day.</p>
<p>Whether it was Vasco in the boat or another sailor carrying only a message from him, I didn’t know. Either way, the thought of what he would say sent spikes of anticipation and dread through me. I didn’t want to feel these things. But Vasco and I had grown close during the time he had been ordered to accompany me, and I couldn’t deny the part of me that wished I hadn’t put any distance between us, that wished we had been lovers.</p>
<p>I also couldn’t hide that part of me from Constantin.</p>
<p>He felt what I felt. And if I shut him out of my mind now, he would know why. Perhaps he would imagine things between Vasco and I had gone farther than they had in truth.
His lips were pressed together in a thin line. His shoulders were tense. But he did not let go of my hand.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry,” I said, glancing over at him.</p>
<p>He shrugged, then looked at me. “Don’t deny the way you feel,” he said after a moment. “I don’t want that.”</p>
<p>I almost laughed. “I’d rather—” I started, but stopped myself before I could say the words. <i>I’d rather that I could deny it.</i> I had to catch the thought before it reached Constantin, keep it back, keep it quiet. It had been some time since I’d felt the need to be careful with my thoughts around him. I had put so much of my hope on Vasco and risked so much to bring him here, all for the people of the continent. And, selfishly, I wanted to see his face and know that he was well. I couldn’t untangle my hopes from my feelings for him.</p>
<p>“Were you lovers?” Constantin asked, studying me, and I tensed. Did he not know? Constantin could look into my memories and see for himself. But he must have seen that for the violation it would have been. He hadn’t looked.</p>
<p>“No,” I said, shaking my head. But that was not the whole truth. “We might have been. If he had not been representing the Nauts.” </p>
<p>“And you had not been the legate of the Congregation?” Constantin asked. A smile tugged at the corner of his lips. He turned, pulling my hand until I had turned to face him, and reached up to run his fingers through my hair. The wind tangled it around his fingers. “So you were uncomfortably in love with him from afar?” he added, and I grimaced at him.</p>
<p>I had tried to keep distance between us. It had been Vasco who had closed that distance, before I had gone up the mountain. If I had come back down, it would have been Vasco’s arms that waited for me, and all my reasons for holding myself back would have died with Constantin.</p>
<p>I might have apologized again, if Constantin hadn’t spoken first. “But you chose me.” He looked at me, searching my eyes until I nodded.</p>
<p>“And you still choose me?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Yes,” I said immediately. The thought that he’d had to ask the question pricked me. Whatever my feelings for Vasco were, it was Constantin who was the center of my life. Losing him would be like losing the sun. There would be no gravity for me any longer, no light.</p>
<p>I didn’t say the words, but I held out my thoughts to him as I stepped into his arms.</p>
<p>“We could leave on that ship,” Constantin murmured into my hair.</p>
<p>I leaned back to look up at him. “You don’t want that.”</p>
<p>“No,” he said. He looked out toward the sea, toward the ship, and shook his head. “But if it means I don’t have to worry about someone trying to kill you…”</p>
<p>I laughed, and his arms tightened around me. “There are people out there who want to kill me, I assure you.”</p>
<p>“What am I going to do with you?” he said. He was smiling.</p>
<p>“We have to stay here, Constantin,” I said. “This is the only place we ever dreamed of, and it’s our home now.”</p>
<p>Constantin kept his eyes on the sea. His smile died. The waves were too loud for me to hear the sound of oars striking the water, but I knew by his expression that the boat must be close.</p>
<p>“Do you want me to stay?” Constantin asked.</p>
<p>“No. …This conversation can’t be about us,” I added when he tensed in silent protest. “It has to be about the people of the continent. That will be hard enough when I’m the one delivering the message.”</p>
<p>“Do you think he’ll try to hurt you?”</p>
<p>Did I? I thought I knew Vasco well. But for all that I had discovered his origins alongside him—and perhaps knew more about them than he realized himself—I had spent less than a year in his company. How could I predict what he would do when he’d been betrayed? But I could not share those doubts with Constantin, not without risking the entire encounter before it had even happened. “No,” I said, putting more certainty than I felt into the word.</p>
<p>I let him go and stepped away. “Watch, if you want to,” I told him when he frowned at me. “But let me handle this. Please.”</p>
<p>Constantin crossed his arms over his chest, but finally he sighed, nodded. “I won’t interfere unless he threatens you.” The thought that he was being excluded from my plans still chafed at him. But this would be the last time. After I saw the boat off back to the Trident, all of our plans would be <i>our</i> plans. I had given him my word.</p>
<p><i>We’re in this together.</i> I sent the thought after him when he disappeared from sight. <i>You’re always with me.</i></p>
<p><i>Lucky you,</i> came his wry response.</p>
<p>His voice in my mind made me smile, even as I turned to find the boat. Constantin had left just as it reached shore. In the shallows, its occupant stowed his oars, jumped over the side into knee-deep water, and took hold of a rope that had been coiled against the bow to pull the little boat the rest of the way in. He glanced up at me as he did, and I saw his face, his sharp profile and high cheekbones marked with tattoos. He narrowed his eyes against the setting sun. It was Vasco. He had come. I forced myself to be still.</p>
<p>He dragged the boat into the sand until its bow lay past the reach of the waves, then straightened, looking at me. For a moment, his hand rested on the hilt of his rapier. I could feel the weight of Constantin’s attention on us. The air had become still and heavy, as though it wouldn’t stir at all when we tried to breathe or tried to speak. Finally, Vasco lowered his eyes. He bowed to me, pressing one hand to his heart, sweeping his other arm behind him, bending low. It was a mockery of courtesy.</p>
<p>“The terms were one ship a year,” he said, raising his voice to carry over the waves. And it did carry. The air was still air, though it held the mind of a god.</p>
<p>Even if Vasco hated me and whatever words he said next were thrown like knives, I wouldn’t regret asking him to come. When I saw him standing there in the leather coat he’d worn when we first met, heard his voice again, a foolish sort of giddy happiness rose in me. I knew I shouldn’t, but I said the words anyway, “That’s a boat. And you’re early.”</p>
<p>When he smiled, there was a moment in which I could believe that we were friends still. Perhaps he believed it too. But his smile was tight and died too soon. He began to walk up the beach toward me, and again he closed his hand on the hilt of his weapon. “So,” he said, almost conversationally, “Are you going to tell me why I’ve been summoned, De Sardet?”</p>
<p>He wore his long red coat and wide tricorn. His stride was long and even, and his free arm swung at his side. Though I had seen him injured during the battle, he looked whole and well now. But when I looked at his face, there were lines on either side of his mouth that hadn’t been there before. His eyes were shadowed by the brim of his hat, but that did not soften the hostility in his gaze.</p>
<p>He stopped two paces away. If it had been possible to build a wall out of empty air, Constantin would have done it.</p>
<p>“Are you thinking of finishing what you started on the mountain?” he asked when I didn’t reply. He glanced at my waist, looking for weapons that weren’t there.</p>
<p>“No,” I said at once. I wanted to take a step toward him, but I stopped myself. No closer. Not until we knew that he wouldn’t try to attack me. “Vasco, I don’t want to hurt you. …I never did.”</p>
<p>I searched his face. Did he believe anything of what I said? “If you thought I might try to kill you, why did you come?”</p>
<p>He laughed once, harshly. “I was ordered to. Why else?” he said. The look he gave me then was like to strip me bare and leave me feeling small and ashamed. “…It seems to be the way of things where you’re concerned. I wonder if I’m the only one who’s been commanded to abandon common sense for your benefit.”</p>
<p>While I was catching my breath from that blow, he reached behind his back. Around us, Constantin’s power surged. A wind rose and became a gale, blowing from the land and carrying a wave of stand with it.</p>
<p>I threw the weight of my own power against Constantin’s, without thinking, loosing my hold on my body enough to become part of the air. <i>Constantin, stop!</i></p>
<p>He resisted. He pushed against me, trying to find a way around me to get to Vasco. But the sun was near the horizon now, and my power was equal to his. I reached out with my power and held against him. Sand fountained up on either side of me as if the wave had broken against a wall.</p>
<p>
  <i>Please…I have to do this.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Will you let him stab you before you do anything to stop it?</i>
</p>
<p>Would I, if it came to that? Had I provoked Vasco enough that he would attack me? It wasn’t a possibility I wanted to confront, but Constantin’s thoughts demanded that I did. And when it came to me, the answer was simple. If Vasco attacked me, I wouldn’t fight back. Whether or not I had earned violence from him, I had to stop it. We had to move on. And if the only way to do that was to let him attack me and win, then…</p>
<p>Then I would lose.</p>
<p>Constantin heard my thoughts, and he relented—unwillingly, but he relented. The wind quieted to stillness for a moment before the sea breeze picked up. I still could feel Constantin’s presence. He was watching. Vasco had taken a step back, his feet braced wide, and stood staring at me with one hand holding his hat in place. In his other hand, he held a small, dark bundle.</p>
<p>I came fully back to myself and held my hands up to him. “I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re right not to trust me…to hate me, if that’s what you feel. And I can’t be sure if I can trust you. …But we have to put that aside. So much depends on it.”</p>
<p>Vasco straightened warily and looked at me with narrow eyes. “What happened to you?”</p>
<p>I shook my head. “Later. That isn’t important now.”</p>
<p>He laughed shortly. “I disagree. –But, whatever. You’re in charge.” <i>As always.</i> He did not say the words, but I heard them anyway. His tone cut me. He paused, then said, “Well, tell me why I’m here, then.”</p>
<p>“First, what is that?” I said, nodding toward the bundle he held in his hand.</p>
<p>He glanced down at it, then tossed it toward me. The fabric unraveled in the air. It was a sash, I saw when it landed in a pile at my feet—the sash I had taken from Commander Brigida’s bed, a purple so dark it was nearly black. I had left it in the boat when Barto had rowed me back to shore.</p>
<p>“The commander sends her regards,” Vasco said as I bent down to pick the sash up out of the sand. He watched me as I straightened and loosely folded the fabric. Brigida was finishing her joke. She was bold enough that she wouldn’t hesitate to send me this reminder of the conversation we had shared, the way she had made me blush at the very end of things. But her wordless message also encouraged me. She may have sent it for a laugh, but I had her support to some degree. She had brought Vasco here, after all.</p>
<p>Then Vasco spoke. “Are you lovers?” he asked bluntly, gesturing at the sash I held in my hands.</p>
<p>I laughed in disbelief before I could stop myself. That question was quickly becoming tiring. The wind stilled again as Constantin focused his attention on me, waiting to hear my response to this question he’d never known he needed to ask. “Do you think I seduced her to sway her to my side?” I asked Vasco.</p>
<p>He blew out a breath, then shook his head and said, “No. I know you wouldn’t do that.”</p>
<p>“Then why ask the question?” I was getting angry now, and I let myself feel it, let him hear it. It was a luxury to feel angry and know that I was right to feel that way.</p>
<p>“Because I know her.”</p>
<p>Bold, laughing Brigida. I wouldn’t deny that if our circumstances had been different I might have found her nearly as irresistible as she seemed to think herself. But there were always circumstances. And my heart already had its ties.</p>
<p><i>This is a new side of you, Lily,</i> Constantin said in his thoughts. I had surprised him out of the first surge of jealousy, and now he was almost laughing with it.</p>
<p><i>I won’t apologize for my attractions,</i> I replied.</p>
<p>
  <i>I am the last person who would ask you to.</i>
</p>
<p>I bit back a sigh and turned to walk down the beach toward a spur of black rock that provided some shelter from the wind. “If we are,” I said over my shoulder, raising my voice so Vasco would hear, “it’s no business of yours. Come—we have more important things to discuss.”</p>
<p>I didn’t look back to see if he followed. I reached the rocks and knelt by the fire pit that the Sisaig Cnameis’s fishers kept there to roast their catch. At the base of one of the wooden spits, I found a fire striker and flint and a tied bundle of dry sea grasses. I heard Vasco’s footsteps as I was trying to coax sparks from the stones. I could nurture a flame in my palm, but that was a different fire. In some ways, I had yet to find the limits of my power. But there were other things in the world that I could not command, that obeyed me only as much as they obeyed any human. It was humbling to have to squat there by the cold fire pit and struggle. Or, it would have been, if I had been in the mood to feel humble.</p>
<p>“Maybe I was asking to know why some are good enough for you and others aren’t,” Vasco said, standing over me, his voice low.</p>
<p>I rested my hands on my thighs, looked up at him, and was surprised to catch him smiling—or nearly. A wry smile pulled at the corner of his lips as he watched me, though there was anger in his face, too, in the tense set of his jaw and the way he avoided meeting my eyes. Abruptly he knelt across from me and held out his hand. “Still rubbish at this, I see,” he said.</p>
<p>“Some things never change,” I said carefully, watching him. I handed the fire striker and flint over and settled back to sit on my heels in the sand.</p>
<p>Three sharp strikes and he had a live ember catching on the grass, sending up a thread of smoke. He leaned down, sheltering it from the wind even as he blew on the tiny flame to coax it to life. He said nothing until the moments had stretched so long that I thought he wouldn’t reply at all. Finally, when the fire was crackling in the grass and curling the bark of the dry wood that had been laid in the fire pit, he sat back, shifting to sit cross-legged, and looked at me. “This has changed, too.”</p>
<p>I nodded, keeping my eyes on the fire. Once, I had secretly sought out these moments with him, when we could share chores away from the others. After long days of searching, sometimes finding no resolution to a problem, it was a relief to banter with Vasco over the beginnings of our camp fire, to laugh with him. After Constantin had been taken, I had relied on Vasco more than any of the others. His way of laughing in the face of the world—but, beneath that, his steady resolve—had kept me moving forward when I might have given up.</p>
<p>All of that had changed because of what I had done. Because I had chosen Constantin, and Constantin’s vision of the future, in the end.</p>
<p>I had to speak with him. When I looked up, he was watching me still, leaning back on one hand, his eyes shadowed by the brim of his hat. “Where is your ship?” I asked.</p>
<p>“I thought personal details weren’t important.”</p>
<p>I held back a sigh. If we only battled with words, we would accomplish nothing. I tried another approach. “Do you know why the Nauts do not suffer from the malichor?”</p>
<p>“You’re assuming it’s still that way.”</p>
<p>“Is it not?” I asked, surprised. If Nauts were falling ill, my entire plan might be built on nothing more than empty speculation.</p>
<p>Vasco shook his head. “Most of us are healthy and don’t see any ill effects from time spent in port on the continent. But,” he added, “I’ve heard that we’ve lost a few port officers to the sickness.”</p>
<p>“You haven’t seen this for yourself?”</p>
<p>“No.” His reply was short. He looked away from me, out into the gathering dark where the waves hissed on the sand.</p>
<p>“Do you know what these officers ate, what they drank?”</p>
<p>“What?” The question surprised a laugh out of him, and he turned toward me again. “How would I know that?”</p>
<p>“Do you have an idea?” I amended. “Would they have had food from Jardim do Mar?”</p>
<p>He studied me for a moment before he answered. “On occasion,” he said, slowly, “when a ship brought fresh supplies from the island. But for the most part, those supplies are for sailors aboard ship. The port officers would eat what food they could find in the city.” He leaned toward me. “What are you thinking?”</p>
<p>“You are thinking it too, now,” I said. “You tell me.” In the air, the weight of Constantin’s attention changed. Before the air had felt brittle, as if it might crack to let fury out. Now, although Constantin’s attention was just as determined, his hostility had been overcome by curiosity. He was listening.</p>
<p>I took it as another hopeful sign that Vasco didn’t respond to my words with anger or brush them off. Instead he snatched up a small stone from the edge of the fire pit and turned it over in his hands as he stared down at it, thinking. “Our food and water is from a different source,” he said, after a moment. “It isn’t contaminated by whatever causes the malichor on the continent.”</p>
<p>I nodded. “But it isn’t just by luck or chance that your food and water is unpolluted.”</p>
<p>His fingers stopped their distracted work, and he looked at me. “We’ve taken better care of our land,” he said slowly.</p>
<p>“You don’t have much of it,” I said. He smiled and laughed once under his breath as if I’d said something humorous. “You have to take care of what you have,” I continued, watching his face. “Your farming practices must acknowledge that reality. –What do your farmers do that they wouldn’t do on the continent?”</p>
<p>“I’m no farmer, De Sardet.”</p>
<p>I studied him, and after a moment, he looked away. He had been brought here on the Trident. His refusal to talk about his ship or any travels to the continent, his laughter when I’d mentioned the size of Jardim do Mar—they were significant. “You’ve given up your ship,” I said. “Vasco—”</p>
<p>He let out a harsh sigh. “What business is that of yours?” he said, echoing my earlier words. The words were sharp; he meant to wound me.</p>
<p>I felt the sting of them. They nurtured the deeper ache that had bloomed in me as soon as he’d set foot on shore.  But I had to keep pressing him, even if I killed whatever feelings he’d had for me completely and wounded my heart all the more for it. I leaned forward. “By coming here you’ve made it my business,” I said softly. He reacted as if I’d come at him with a blade, sitting up straight, turning to face me. Before he could speak, I continued, “The continent needs you on your ship, Captain Vasco.”</p>
<p>He stared at me with narrowed eyes. “I missed the part where I’m supposed to give a damn about what the continent needs.”</p>
<p>“How long do you think the Nauts will survive when all your clients are falling to war or sickness?”</p>
<p>“There’s good money to be made in ferrying soldiers. Don’t worry yourself about our coffers.”</p>
<p>“But it cannot last,” I said. “You know it can’t.”</p>
<p>He fell silent, clenching his jaw, and I pressed forward, softer now. “We thought the islanders were the only ones who knew how to heal the land. That was what <i>en on míl frichtimen</i> told us, and we believed him. But it isn’t true. The Nauts know how to nurture their land, keep it healthy. They have always known.</p>
<p>“That is what the continent needs to hear from you, Vasco.”</p>
<p>His face changed. For a moment, surprise made him look younger than all of his years and experience, before bitter humor sharpened his gaze and twisted his lips. “What are you trying to do?” he asked. “Make me into some kind of hero, some”—he shook his head slowly, searching for the words—“farmer priest?”</p>
<p>In spite of my hurt, I smiled. “I’m only seeing what is already there.” He scoffed. “You’re no farmer. But you are a man who won’t let closed doors stop you. You can speak to the people who need to be spoken to.”</p>
<p>“You’ve been away from the continent too long. Nobles aren’t in the habit of listening to Naut sailors.”</p>
<p>“De Courcillon will listen,” I said. I did not stop to question if he was alive. I wouldn’t invite that possibility. My old professor knew enough of the direction my inquiries into a cure had taken to understand the causes of the malichor and avoid them. He had to be alive. “He can send you to others who will hear what you have to say.”</p>
<p>“You miscalculated, De Sardet,” Vasco said, after a moment in which he’d looked at me like I’d done worse to him than insult his ship. “This plan of yours depends on me going to the continent. But I don’t follow your orders now. Find someone else to be your messenger.”</p>
<p>“Wait, Vasco,” I said, holding out a hand as he planted one foot and shifted as if to stand. He paused—perhaps against his better judgement, but he did wait. Our eyes met. “Did you ever learn what brought about the contract that required your parents to give you up?”</p>
<p>He took in a sharp breath. “You know,” he said. Slowly, he turned back to face me and settled back down across the fire. “Well?”</p>
<p>I had hoped that the lure of learning more about his past might keep him from leaving, but though I had his attention for the moment, I couldn’t relax. Not yet. What I said next might still drive him away. “The Prince d’Orsay wanted to bring a <i>doneigad</i> captured on the island and her Sea-born child to Sérène. When he did, he not only deprived the Nauts of their right to the child, he made the decision to break the Congregation’s treaty with the Nauts, that had kept the island and the Congregation’s first attempts at colonization secret for hundreds of years. The Nauts demanded compensation.” I looked at him over the fire. He had cast his eyes downward, listening. “You were part of that compensation. The prince’s decision changed both of our lives, irrevocably.”</p>
<p>“Because you were given the life of a noble,” he said slowly, looking up, his eyes searching the darkness, “I was given the life of a Naut.”</p>
<p>“Both lives that we weren’t meant to have,” I said. “Both lives that made us something…different, something stronger.”</p>
<p>He laughed, glancing at me. “I’m not the only Sea-given noble amongst the Nauts, De Sardet. Far from it.”</p>
<p>“No,” I agreed. “But you have pushed farther than anyone, Vasco. You pushed yourself to rise. And then to find your family, your past.</p>
<p>“You aren’t a messenger,” I said. “But no messenger could convince the nations of the continent that the Nauts have something that they do not—and it isn’t magic, but the science created by hard-working, brilliant people who have made a life out of where they ended up.”</p>
<p>He looked at me for so long that I thought my words had failed to reach him completely and he would leave. Finally he smiled wryly and shook his head. “Should I be honored that you’re putting so much effort into convincing me? I thought only governors were worthy of fancy speeches.”</p>
<p>“And obstinate Naut captains, as it turns out.” The banter and jests that had come so easily before, once I had gotten to know the man behind Vasco’s cold distrust of the nobility, now felt like steps into the unknown. Would there be ground beneath my feet or nothing at all? Would he smile or look at me with hatred?</p>
<p>He did not look at me at all. I watched him staring away from the fire, the muscles in his jaw working as if caught between speaking and holding the words back. I took another step. “You only just resolved to be who you are,” I said softly. “Why did you give up your ship?”</p>
<p>He turned, giving me a sharp look. But whatever he would have said was lost in silence as he stopped and stared at me. He narrowed his eyes, studying me, looked away and then looked back at me again out of the corner of his eye. Was he seeing me as he remembered me, or was he seeing white fire and a crown of branches? Unless they reacted with fear or wonder, I had no way of knowing how others saw me; I could not control my appearance in their eyes. I had never thought that I had paid particular attention to my appearance—I’d certainly never bothered with cosmetics once I was no longer required to wear them—but now that the ability to do anything at all about it had been taken away from me, I missed the ritual of putting on my clothing, my coat and hat, knowing that I represented the Congregation and all the wealth and power we’d had once and would have again.</p>
<p>I hadn’t had this feeling often; the pleasure of getting dressed had been replaced by other pleasures, like feeling the edge of night cool and limitless against my skin. But with Vasco sitting across from me looking at me like I was a stranger, a strange thing, I wanted the familiar, mundane uniform I’d worn when I had been human.</p>
<p><i>You’re so much more now,</i> Constantin murmured in my head. <i>He should see it.</i> His thoughts toward Vasco were distant and dismissive. We were other, and what was wrong with that? We weren’t one thing, but thousands. We would live many lives. And we could be better than the ones who had come before us. We would be better, for Tír Fradí.</p>
<p><i>But we’re still human, too,</i> I answered his thoughts. I didn’t want to be separated forever from people. And despite what Constantin said, I knew he did not want that either.</p>
<p><i>You may change your mind eventually,</i> Constantin said. He meant when Vasco and everyone else I’d known before we’d become <i>en on míl frichtimen</i> had died.</p>
<p>I shook my head. <i>Or you might change yours, Constantin.</i> To Vasco I said, “What do you see?”</p>
<p>He paused in his study of me and met my eyes. “I don’t know,” he said finally, bemused. “I thought I saw…”</p>
<p>“What?” I pressed when he trailed off.</p>
<p>“Another fire, a brighter one,” he said. His smile was tense, his brow drawn. “Am I seeing ghosts?”</p>
<p>What would his reaction be if he saw me as I truly was? Would I no longer be De Sardet, or human, in his eyes? There was only one way to know, and for that, he would have to see.</p>
<p>I took a breath. “Look again.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thanks everyone who's left kudos recently! I hope you're still enjoying the story.</p>
<p>"You're early. And that's a boat." --That line has been in my head for months, and for a while, I thought it wasn't going to work in the scene. But I made it happen anyway. Because #churchofidowhatiwant.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. The Edge of Night</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <i>Lily</i>
  </p>
</div><p>I was there, sitting by the cold fire, when Vasco woke. His coat was rumpled and covered with sand, and his cheek was creased with the folds of his sleeve. Strands of his fine blonde hair had come loose from the cord that tied them back and whipped around his face in the breeze. Sleep made him look young and unguarded. I took in his appearance at a glance and stood before I could think too much of other conversations in the middle of the night and other quiet mornings.</p>
<p>The sun had cleared the horizon to the east, but the air was still cool and the light soft. High tide had left a line of shells and flotsam alongside the stern of Vasco’s boat. When he joined me down by the water’s edge, he had straightened and dusted off his coat and sash and settled his hat on his head. He looked the part of the captain again.</p>
<p>Vasco glanced at me before he turned away and began to busy himself with setting the oars between their pins. Then he moved to the boat’s prow.</p>
<p>“Thank you,” I said, and he looked up at me, raising his brows under the brim of his hat. “You didn’t have to come or listen to me,” I added, “even with orders.”</p>
<p>He nodded distractedly and turned again toward the boat, setting one hand on its gunwale. Finally, he sighed. “I’ll take your message to De Courcillon. That’s all I’m promising. He can decide what to do with the information.”</p>
<p>I nodded. That was enough. I hadn’t expected even that much. Nothing I had said last night had convinced him; he’d come to this decision on his own, for reasons I didn’t understand. I could only be grateful that he’d decided the way he did.</p>
<p>Vasco couldn’t know what the meeting with De Courcillon would mean for him; he hadn’t conversed with my old professor except in passing. De Courcillon had a way of catching hold of a line of inquiry and leaping forward with it, so that anyone with him was carried along in his wake. I had no doubt that he would set Vasco a list of tasks that would send him to other nations. I may never speak with De Courcillon again, but I could rely on him in this. He wanted the cure as much, or more, than I did. He would use Vasco to accomplish that goal—and, I hoped, force Vasco to reckon with himself in the process.</p>
<p>“Will you go in the Sea Horse?” I asked.</p>
<p>He shrugged, still not looking at me. “If the admirals see fit to give her back to me.”</p>
<p>“You’ll need your old crew.”</p>
<p>Now he did look sharply at me, but he didn’t speak. Instead, he straightened and took a step toward me. Before I realized what he was doing, he caught my right arm just above my wrist and held tight when I tried to jerk away.</p>
<p>For a moment, he only looked down at his hand and the fire that brushed over his skin. “It’s cold.”</p>
<p>I had pulled enough away that my scarred palm was out of his reach. The fire no longer burned there now that the sun had risen, but I could feel it rippling under the surface of my skin like a separate pulse. I wouldn’t take the chance that I might kill him.</p>
<p>His palm still bore lines of callouses, not from his work aboard ship but from all the hours he’d spent with his rapier in his hand. He shifted his grip, brushing his fingers over my inner arm, baring my skin for a moment in the places he touched. The heat of his hand felt as though it would leave a mark on me. And I must have felt as cold as winter to him.</p>
<p>“Vasco…” I said, warningly. This time when I pulled back, he let me go.</p>
<p>Before I could guess at what he was thinking, he took a clumsy step back and I followed his gaze down to see the root snaking up from the sand to snare his ankle and calf. If Vasco had made a move to touch me the night before, I had no doubt that Constantin would have been more forceful. Now he had only given a warning.</p>
<p>Vasco held up his hands, eyeing the root. “Easy,” he said. “I thought we weren’t attacking each other.”</p>
<p>“I didn’t call it,” I said, going to kneel at his side. “Don’t move.” The root gave when I pulled it away from him, and I felt it crumbling beneath my palm, the ashes sifting through my fingers.</p>
<p>When I stood and took a step back, he was watching me. “It’s him.” He glanced behind me and turned to scan the shoreline as if Constantin might be waiting somewhere in sight.</p>
<p>“Yes,” I said. “He…wanted to take precautions.”</p>
<p><i>Such a polite word,</i> Constantin said in my thoughts.</p>
<p><i>Tell me you weren’t hoping for things to become impolite,</i> I replied. Constantin said nothing.</p>
<p>“I know it’s too much to hope that we part as friends,” I said aloud.</p>
<p>Vasco laughed once, under his breath, and turned back to consider me. “Is that what you want?”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>
 “What do you see?”

</p>
<p>
The wind did not ruffle the flames in my left hand. I reached out, and the white fire leaped from my palm to one burning log, spreading its fingers across the bark, crumbling the log almost instantly to ash that flurried up from the fire pit. I reached for another log, and the light from our camp fire dimmed.
</p>
<p>
  <i></i>
</p>
<p>
  <i></i>
</p>
<p>I didn’t see Vasco move until his hand was inches from mine. I pulled my hand back before he could touch me. “Don’t.”</p>
<p>When I looked up at him, his eyes reflected the fire—not the warm glow of the camp fire but the white fire that rippled across my skin. Surprise had eased the tense lines across his brow and on either side of his mouth. He hadn’t moved his hand.</p>
<p>Finally, he pulled back. He rubbed his fingers across his palm before he closed his hand in a fist and rested it on his thigh. “This is what happened,” he said, jerking his chin toward me, “on the mountain?” His voice was rough. He cleared his throat.</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>“Are you…” he started, then paused, glancing away. I waited until his eyes found mine again. “What happened? What are you?”</p>
<p>The question might have tormented me. I was surprised when I felt only relief instead. He could see me as I was. And the person I was now—<i>person,</i> though I could take the shape of any creature I chose and walk where no one living could go—was very different from the person he had known. She had changed so much as to be unrecognizable. It wasn’t the transformation itself that had changed me, at least not inwardly, but everything that had happened after—returning spirits to the earth in Tír Anemen, sinking into the heart of the volcano, feeling my wings catch the sea wind, speaking in front of the council of kings. Sharing my mind with Constantin. Loving Constantin.

</p>
<p>
  “We took <i>en on míl frichtimen</i>’s place,” I said. I watched for his reaction, but I no longer dreaded it. “Constantin and I are the spirits of Credhenes now.”
</p>
<p>
  <i></i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i></i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>Constantin’s approval blazed up in the back of my mind. I could feel how hard it was for him to remain incorporeal when he wanted to grab my arms, to shout. He restrained himself to doing these things in my mind.</p>
<p>I smiled; I couldn’t help it.</p>
<p>Then Vasco spoke, pulling me out of our shared thoughts. “Why do you care what happens to the continent then? You’ve apparently gotten what you wanted.”</p>
<p>I shook my head. “I want what is best for Tír Fradí. This is my home. The Congregation used me to try to take the island, but that doesn’t mean that I want its people to suffer.” But it was more than some distant benevolence that drove me. If that was all that I felt, perhaps I could have done as Constantin wanted and left the nations of the continent to live or die on their own.</p>
<p>No, the malichor was a personal enemy. “I watched the malichor kill my mother,” I said. Vasco’s eyes flicked down and to the side before he looked at me again. We both knew she hadn’t been my birth mother, but she had been the only mother I’d known. I still felt her death as if the malichor had taken a physical part of me, too. “I promised her I would find the cure.”</p>
<p>And then there had been Constantin. Vasco had been by my side through the terrible onslaught of Constantin’s illness. He knew how the seeming inevitability of Constantin’s death had driven me.</p>
<p>And I knew Vasco well enough to read his thoughts on his face. He was thinking of Constantin, of Constantin and me together. Perhaps he was telling himself that he should have known things would end this way, and he had been a love-struck fool to believe otherwise. Since I had seen him last, those thoughts had settled into new lines on his face. They had changed him. He had lost the certainty that had carried him on to become one of the youngest captains in the history of the Naut fleet.</p>
<p>What could I say to bring him back to himself? I watched him, wavering on the edge of saying something—and suddenly, I knew that this was what it had been like for Constantin, all those months that he had watched and felt me torn between relief that he was alive and we were together and regret for what I’d done. All that time, he had wanted to help, and each time he had tried, it was only to fall short as I kept struggling against myself.</p>
<p>
  Then you go, Vasco might have said. But for a long moment he said nothing, only looked into the dying fire.
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>“Yes,” I said, then added, “If you think I’m worthy of it.”</p>
<p>“Mm.” I felt as though he was weighing Dorhadgenedu against every fight we’d gone into side-by-side, every laughed we’d shared, and I wasn’t sure where the balance would fall. Finally he shook his head and turned back to the boat. The hull scraped over sand and the debris left by the tide as he set his weight against it and pushed it back until the wash of water from each incoming wave lifted the stern. He paused there and stood.</p>
<p>“I’ve seen stranger things than you on this island,” he said. “I can’t say I’ve ever made friends with a <i>Nádaig</i>, though.”</p>
<p>“No,” I agreed. “But I’d recommend it. You are allied with us now, after all.”</p>
<p>In reply he only looked at me quietly, the corner of his lips turned up in a smile that I couldn’t read. I’d almost made him laugh. Almost. But there was something else in that smile as well, grief or…disorientation. He looked at me, taking me in, as if he wouldn’t see me again. And perhaps that was true. I wasn’t the Lily he knew any longer.</p>
<p>I nodded and took a step back, and he seemed to come back to himself. He bowed his head briefly to me and turned back to his boat, pushing it out until the water lifted it. I watched as he swung his legs over the side and settled himself on the thwart. With a few strokes of the oars, he turned the bow into the waves. Already his expression was distant. He glanced behind to find the Trident on the horizon.</p>
<p>He looked up at me once before he’d carried himself too far away for me to see his face, just as Constantin appeared out of the air at my side.</p>
<p>“That’s done,” he said, watching Vasco. He held back his feelings on the matter, not out of a desire to hide them from me—he’d never hidden his feelings on my plan—but out of care for me. He had shared my mind the entire night; he knew what I felt.</p>
<p>I nodded, and for a time we stood there without speaking, while Vasco’s boat neared the Trident and the ship’s sails unfurled. Now that their business was done, the Nauts would be returning to Jardim do Mar, or perhaps the continent. There was nothing else I could do to influence events; I could only hope that Vasco did as he’d promised, and that De Courcillon was still a man who could inspire others to action—still alive, whispered a voice inside of me—whether those others wanted to act or not.</p>
<p>Standing here distracted, deliberating what else I might have said or where else I should have asked Vasco to go—that would do nothing. I had my own problems to solve here on Tír Fradí; from this moment, the continent’s fate was its own.</p>
<p>I could feel Constantin relax as my thoughts turned away from the ship. He may not have spoken, but his thoughts, though he’d kept them close, had been anything but quiet. When I focused on him, I could hear them:  he wanted me back, I’d let myself get carried too far away.</p>
<p><i>I’m here, Constantin,</i> I said. <i>Really here.</i></p>
<p>He sighed and turned to look at me. There were lines of concern on his face that hadn’t been there before Vasco had come ashore. I wanted to touch him and reassure him again that I really was here, with him, but before I could move, he spoke in my thoughts. <i>What did he say about Síora?</i></p>
<p>He had heard everything Vasco had said last night. He could just as easily have recalled the memory himself and heard the words as if Vasco was saying them again in this moment. But he wanted me to remember. Perhaps it was because the words had been so hard for me to hear.</p>
<p>I saw you on the mountain, I had said.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>
  “It was you that put everyone to sleep,” he said slowly.
</p>
<p>
  <i></i>
</p>
<p>
  <i></i>
</p>
<p>I nodded. “Yes.”</p>
<p>“Why?” He was studying me again. Once he’d burned through the hottest part of his anger, he’d resorted to pointed questions, as if I’d become a stranger to him again and he was trying to find me out.</p>
<p>I had barely believed that Vasco would come at all, and even less that he would sit and talk with me into the night. I hadn’t thought at all about the questions he might ask or how I might defend myself against the accusations that I had known he would have. Or, perhaps the truth was that I was tired of defending myself. “I had to stop the battle, if I could. I couldn’t let Síora… She was sacrificing herself. I couldn’t let that happen.</p>
<p>“You knew the battle was lost then,” I said. “You tried to stop her.”</p>
<p>He had watched me the whole time I was speaking; now he looked away. “Like you said, the battle was over. I wasn’t going to let her die for nothing.”</p>
<p>“But she convinced you to leave her. What did she say?” I hadn’t been able to hear the words they’d shared on the mountain. It was still a mystery to me that my other senses had been so powerful—I had felt Vasco’s hand close around Síora’s arm, had seen the <i>Nádaig baro</i> looming above them on the rocks as if it had been day still—but I hadn’t been able to hear them. I remembered a muffling pulse in my ears, like the thrumming of insects in the summer, and nothing more.</p>
<p>“What did she say?” he repeated. He frowned, looking off past the fire again, trying to remember. “That her life was nothing if <i>en on míl frichtimen</i> died,” he said slowly. “She said that her power was from the island, and if she could give it back to protect the island, she would. …It was her decision to make.”</p>
<p>Síora thought she had nothing left to lose. She had no reason not to fight us because we, and the <i>renaígse</i> who had come before us, had taken everything she had. Her mother and so many of her clan. Her god and her faith. And we couldn’t offer those things back to her. She was ready to face us and die if it meant she and her army might overthrow us.</p>
<p>If I had nothing to offer her, could I prevent the battle that was coming? What if Constantin was right, and the only way to stop Síora and Eseld was to kill them?</p>
<p>I hadn’t intended to betray Síora at Dorhadgenedu, but if I fought her now, and fought to win, I would make that betrayal complete. We would only be enemies to each other.</p>
<p>I did not notice at first that Vasco was speaking. “…fighting you.”</p>
<p>“What?” I looked up at him. “…I’m sorry, Vasco. I was thinking.”</p>
<p>“I said, she’s still fighting you.” The look he gave me said that he knew what my answer would be before I spoke.</p>
<p>“Yes.” I might have stopped there. It was risky to give him information that he might take back to the admirals or others on the continent. But I was trusting him with so much already; I would trust him with this, too. “I’m trying to find a way to stop her before she starts a battle we can’t walk away from.”</p>
<p>“She’s not starting a battle,” Vasco said. He laughed under his breath, shaking his head, but when he looked at me his eyes were shadowed. “She’s finishing one.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>“She has to lose,” Constantin said. His voice drew me out of the memory. I had been able to go so deeply into it—until I could smell the logs on the fire burning and hear Vasco’s voice as if he was sitting across from me again—because he had gone with me. “Not so we can win—so we can <i>live</i>. There’s no way around that now.”</p>
<p>It wasn’t just what Vasco had said. Constantin wanted me to remember what I had thought last night, the certainty that I could no longer escape.</p>
<p>I glanced up to meet his eyes. He held my gaze steadily. He was willing me to understand. We had tried to stop the battle that was coming, and failed. Was it wrong to want to win, and survive, if there was no other way?</p>
<p>I didn’t realize that I’d started to raise my hands to my waist until I felt Constantin’s hand close around both of mine. “Someone has to lose,” he said. “I won’t let it be us.”</p>
<p>Everything else had failed. I was out of options. But still, I hesitated.</p>
<p>Constantin sighed. “Lily, you gave me your word.”</p>
<p>I had. I had promised that we would be in this together, and if we were forced to fight, my place would always be beside Constantin.</p>
<p>I nodded and felt his hand squeeze mine, felt his relief. “Constantin, if…” He met my eyes, waiting, and I forced myself to continue. “If you can think of a way to end this without killing them…”</p>
<p>“I’ll do it.” He didn’t have to say how unlikely it was; his thoughts were clear on the matter. But it was the best that I could do when I was out of ideas.</p>
<p>“And if not…” I said, “then we fight to win.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>I could still see the sails of the Trident to the southeast as we climbed the hill back into Vígnámrí, but my thoughts weren’t on the ship or its course. When we had arrived in the village to meet the ship, Slan had not come to greet us. Ullan had said we would find her at Bedrí—and we had found her, on her knees, her head bowed, in the center of the stone circle. She had buried her hands in the soft earth, and she muttered to herself, her voice almost too low for me to hear. I made out the words of the Yecht Fradí prayer, “<i>Men me dad, en on míl frichtimen.</i>” She repeated them again and again in a cracked voice.</p>
<p>When I took her hands, they were stiff and swollen. Underneath the dirt, her skin had darkened to an almost bluish black.</p>
<p>“What’s happening to her?” I asked Constantin. Slan had been tired at Dorhadgenedu, but not sick. Not like this.</p>
<p>“She’s being called,” he said after a moment. He didn’t want to say the words, but he did, watching for my reaction. “She’s becoming a <i>Nádaig</i>.”</p>
<p>“Can you stop it?” I heard a tremor of panic in my voice and tried to take a deep breath, steady myself.</p>
<p>He shook his head, and I turned back to Slan. She wouldn’t look at me; her eyes were turned toward the ground she had been worrying with her hands without seeming to see it, as if she’d been struck blind.</p>
<p>Then Constantin came to kneel beside me. He took Slan’s face in his hands, gently, and tilted her chin up. “Slan.”</p>
<p>Somehow he was able to reach her when I was not. She lifted her gaze and stilled when she met Constantin’s eyes. As I watched, her gaze grew clearer, and she focused on his face. He was reaching into her mind, pulling up memories of Vígnámrí, of her work, of me, and crowding out the insistent whispering of Tír Fradí. He was forcing her to remember who she was.</p>
<p>“Tiern,” she whispered in that cracked voice. She brought her hand up to touch Constantin’s, and flinched away when she did and felt how her skin had changed.</p>
<p>“Lily is here,” he said in Yecht Fradí, gesturing toward me as he sat back.</p>
<p>She turned, and when she saw me, she smiled. The corners of her lips trembled with weariness. “My magem,” she said. “I wanted to see you.”</p>
<p>Constantin and I supported Slan between us and brought her back to the village, and though Ullan looked at us with questions in his eyes, we took her into her home and settled her on her mat. This wasn’t the way things were done, Ullan and others said with their watchful silence. I didn’t care.</p>
<p>Constantin and I no longer slept, not the way humans did. Slan fell asleep before the sun had set, and I sat beside her and watched her chest rise and fall and the way her eyes moved when she dreamed. Constantin sat quietly beside me, his thoughts elsewhere on the island. He shifted and sighed as the sun went down, and I felt his hand on the small of my back.</p>
<p>“You can’t do anything else for her, Lily.”</p>
<p>This was the way the island’s spirits were born. They weren’t eternal; they were born from the people whose bond with Tír Fradí was so strong that they heard the call of the land, who did not die but were transformed. I knew that. Constantin and I had transformed ourselves.</p>
<p>But I also understood why those who had loved the <i>Nádaig</i> when they’d been human would give up their lives and leave everyone they knew to be near them, even in the depths of Védvílvie. Slan was dying. Slan wouldn’t die. It was all happening at once.</p>
<p>When Constantin pulled me out of my body into the night, I let him. It was a relief to rest in thousands of lives, as many as there were stars in the sky. And if some of those stars went black, their lives snuffed out, the night still shone.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>Slan’s house was still dark when I returned. I could hear her steady breaths, though they came with the rattle of a cough. Constantin was gone. When I reached for him, I felt him sitting on the highest point of the roof, watching the eastern horizon. He was too deep in his thoughts to feel my touch.</p>
<p>I only noticed the pinprick of light when I turned toward the door, toward the west. It hovered in my vision, staying fixed when I turned my head, though it came from no lamp or fire in the room. It was the ghost light of a spirit just crossed over to Tír Anemen. Someone had recently died, and during the hours of the night his kin had lit lamps for him and said the words over his body so he could return to the earth. Whether I was in Tír Anemen or the living world, I would see that light until I met the spirit and sent him on, back into everything living.</p>
<p>In a way these brief meetings might have become as mundane as anything I’d done as the legate of the Congregation. Most of the dead were strangers that I met only in passing. I would never see them again. But in the moments that I spent with them, the weight of their emotions never failed to leave a mark on me. Awe, relief, grief, surprise—I remembered their faces almost as well as Constantin might have because of their reactions to finding themselves in Tír Anemen, to seeing me.</p>
<p>In the end, I was only a conduit between one world and the other. I had no control over that power. I was a witness to the journey between death and the soul of all things, nothing more, as in awe of the mystery as the dead themselves.</p>
<p><i>Constantin.</i> In the moment after I said his name, he knew what was happening. He saw the light through my eyes and felt how I was torn.</p>
<p><i>Go,</i> he said, already pushing himself up to his feet. <i>I’ll stay with her.</i></p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div><p>I seeped into the tomb like air or rainwater and reformed my body on the inside. The air was fresh; the door had not been closed yet. But there was another smell that was unusual. I walked down the short tunnel, and instead of rock and moss, my feet met soft, bare earth. The water that pooled in depressions in the floor was muddy, and the walls were a mess of torn roots and earth still marked with the blows of stone picks. That was the smell—bare soil.</p>
<p>The tomb itself would have been dark, if not for the light from two lamps that hung from the ceiling and the smaller lamps that burned at the body’s head and feet. Where was the crevice in the roof? All tombs had an opening to the outside world in their ceilings, so that life could find its way even in death.</p>
<p>Who was this person? Why had they made him a new tomb and not buried him with his kin?</p>
<p>I turned to the body and found an elder lying on the slab of stone that offered her back to the earth. Her skin shone with oil, and her face had been painted with the blue whorls and streaks that marked those from Wenshaveye. She wasn’t marked with the bond of an <i>on ol menawí</i>. No branches grew from her head. In her clasped hands she held sprigs of leaves and berries and a flint. She had been a gatherer, and one of the keepers of the village’s fire.</p>
<p>When I opened the way to Tír Anemen, I found her spirit waiting there, just across the table from where I stood. She bent over her body, her hand hovering over her face. When the light and shadows around her shifted, she looked up, and her mouth dropped open in surprise.</p>
<p>“Oh—” she said, bringing her hands up to her face, backing away a step. “Oh!”</p>
<p>“Beurd tír to mad. Be easy,” I said in Yecht Fradí, trying to keep my voice soft. I forced myself to stay still. If I went toward her, I might spook her more.</p>
<p>But in the next instant, she came around the table, reaching for me, her eyes wide. “Ciotach!” Her fingers brushed my arms before I could move back. “You have come!”</p>
<p>I nodded. I closed my left hand and put my arm behind my back, so she couldn’t touch the fire in my palm and go back to the earth before we’d had a chance to speak. I wanted to know why she had a new tomb and why it hadn’t been finished.</p>
<p>“I have,” I said. “Be calm. May I speak with you?”</p>
<p>The question took her by surprise. She pulled her hands back, and they fluttered uncertainly between her belt and her mouth. “Yes,” she said. “Speak with me? Yes.” She looked around. Her eyes lingered on her body, and she reached for it again before seeming to remember that she could not touch anything in the living world. Those hands must have always been busy in life. She wasn’t sure what to do with them now.</p>
<p>I waited until she looked at me again. “Do you know why they gave you a new tomb?” I asked her gently, trying to phrase the question carefully, so it did not seem like an accusation.</p>
<p>Now she looked at the walls and ceiling and made a noise low in her throat, a sharp sound of surprise. But when she moved, it was to stand by her body’s head. She met my eyes and held her hand over her face. “This is wrong, Ciotach,” she said. “I am of the Vegaíg Awelas. This is wrong.” Her voice trembled slightly as her fingers brushed through her skin.</p>
<p>For the first time I noticed that her spirit’s face did not match her body’s. The bridge of her nose and her cheeks were painted with streaks that paid tribute to a bird’s wings; even in Tír Anemen I could make out the red and black paint used by her clan.</p>
<p>“Why would they do that?”</p>
<p>She surprised me when she answered; I had spoken my thoughts out loud without realizing. “They have cast me out.” She only murmured the words, looking down at her face, and her hand kept moving, as though if she only tried harder she could wipe the blue paint away.</p>
<p>I watched her, too distracted by my thoughts to offer any comfort. A new tomb. And a body that had been altered. Desecrated, in a way that should never have happened.</p>
<p>Or, was it a disguise? Why would the dead need a disguise?</p>
<p>The spirit was right; something was wrong. I scanned the tomb, but aside from the torn earth walls and exposed roots, nothing stood out. There were no threats here.</p>
<p>I expanded my awareness outside the tomb, reaching for the surrounding forest, the cliffs that stood hard against the ocean. There—the fires of many living spirits, people, gathered outside the door of the tomb at the edge of the trees.</p>
<p>They were waiting for me. I knew it in my core before I accepted it. They might have been mourners, but the ritual of returning one’s dead kin to the earth was a private one. The larger celebrations of the person’s life would be held in the village—and this woman’s village was far from where we stood.</p>
<p>They had dug this tomb for me, to bring me here.</p>
<p>My pounding heart and clenching stomach brought me back to myself. The spirit was still there. She was still now, watching me. Already my thoughts were outside with Síora and Eseld and the warriors they had brought to ambush me, but I forced myself to put those thoughts aside for the moment. This poor woman had been caught up in a war in which she had no part. She did not deserve the confusion she felt, and she did not deserve to be dismissed by me.</p>
<p>“Your clan has not cast you out,” I said carefully in Yecht Fradí. “They have not forgotten you.” I came around the stone slab to stand in front of her. “There are people who call themselves my enemies. They changed your face to try to trick me.”</p>
<p>“A trick?” She looked up at me, but her gaze was distant, her brow furrowed with confusion. She didn’t understand. And why would she? The Yecht Fradí held the dead in too high regard to do something like this. But to trick the spirit of Tír Anemen… They had decided their ploy was worth wronging the dead. Síora had decided it.</p>
<p>“This isn’t yours to worry over,” I said. I held out my hands to her.</p>
<p>She started to reach for me, then stopped, glancing at the fire that burned in my left palm and then meeting my eyes. The ferocity in her face surprised me. There was no sign of her confusion of a moment ago. “This is not right,” she said, her voice firm. “I did not want to be part of this trick. I would never betray you, or—or abandon you, en on míl frichtimen.”</p>
<p>The passion in her voice made me smile. “I know,” I said, then thought to add, “thank you.”</p>
<p>She dropped her hands, reaching for her body without looking. “Will you make it right?</p>
<p>I hesitated to answer her, long enough that she saw it. Ever since I had put Síora and the others still on the mountain to sleep at the end of the battle at Dorhadgenedu, I had tried to make things right between us. I had tried to explain to her that I’d done what I had to, that we were of Tír Fradí now and wouldn’t harm any of its people. But nothing I did could undo that first betrayal.</p>
<p>“I will try,” I said finally.</p>
<p>When I felt her touch, it wasn’t on my palms but the backs of my fingers. It was a whisper of a touch, her fingers brushing against mine, slightly more solid than the empty air. “Ciotach and Deasach, the spirits of renewal.” I shivered when she named us. <i>En on cenedu</i>. The ones of renewal. Rebirth.</p>
<p>She smiled at me, and I couldn’t say anything. But perhaps I didn’t need to. She moved her hands to press her palms to mine, and I felt the swelling of my power, like a river growing to a flood. The white, silent fires raced away from me in every direction. Then she was gone, and I was alone in the tomb with Síora’s army outside.</p>
<p>I looked down at her one last time. I had never learned her name. But after this, if I survived, I would find her kin in Wenshavarr and bring them here to return her to her home and paint her face as it should be, so her body could be whole.</p>
<p>I walked up the sloping tunnel to the tomb’s entrance and paused there. The fires of the warriors’ spirits lit the trees at the forest’s edge, and in the heart of the flames, I could see their silhouettes as they leaned against tree trunks or bent over their weapons, lounging, waiting. Between us lay an open, rocky meadow and a road coming down a hill. I must have traveled this way at some point during my time as legate.</p>
<p>I could walk past them in Tír Anemen. But Kurt had told me Síora sensed the men of his unit if they came too near. The ghosts chilled the air around them in the living world, and the living could feel their presence. Would Síora sense me now if I passed them?</p>
<p>I could leave the tomb as I’d come in, letting go of my body and slipping through the walls. That would be the safest way.</p>
<p>But that would only delay the battle. Síora, Eseld, and all their army wanted this. They would find another way to force a confrontation between us, and next time we may have no warning at all.</p>
<p>I had to give them the battle they wanted.</p>
<p>Before I moved, I reached for Kurt. After Dorhadgenedu, he had wanted to follow me back to Vigyigidaw, but that had proved more difficult than either of us had realized it would be. Without a constant need to wait and watch and constant reminders of what he’d intended to do, Kurt’s thoughts kept drifting off, and his steps drifted toward New Sérène, his grave, and his men. Finally, I’d taken him back there myself and discovered that ghosts could move through Tír Anemen in a way that was very similar to the way Constantin and I moved across the island, un-forming and reforming themselves where they wanted. The difference was that a ghost’s thoughts were so broken, they had very little direction over what they did. Kurt remembered only a few places well enough to take himself to them; his grave was the center and almost the whole extent of his world.</p>
<p>I called him now, sending him the impression of the tomb and the army waiting outside it, and though I hadn’t decided what I would do when he arrived, I took my first deep breath since I’d realized the trap I’d fallen into when he appeared. His ghost billowed up from the bare floor of the tomb like smoke without a fire. When his face resolved itself, he was already staring in the direction of Síora’s army, his lips pressed in a severe line.</p>
<p>A pressure, a presence, behind me made me turn. The rest of Kurt’s unit stood behind us, crowding the tunnel, a shifting fog that resolved itself into arms and faces as they leaned forward, craning over each other’s shoulders to see.</p>
<p>“How many?” Kurt asked beside me.</p>
<p>I turned back to look out at the white fires beneath the trees. They merged into each other; it was difficult to tell where one person ended and another began. “Nearly forty,” I said, but Kurt caught the uncertainty in my voice. He waited until I had counted again quickly and nodded confirmation.</p>
<p>Nearly forty. So many. Síora and Eseld had brought fewer than twenty with them to Vígnámrí. The clans’ long resistance against the colonists had taken its toll; there simply weren’t many warriors left among them. Forty was an army.</p>
<p>We have to do this now, I reminded myself. Now or they would find another way. Now or they might bring even more people with them the next time they came.</p>
<p>I tried to steel myself against the nausea that threatened to erode all of my resolve. My body might not have been capable of cold sweats, but I could imagine them. In the few moments we’d had to rest before the Battle of the Red Spears, I’d had this feeling. Even changed as I was, my head still swam, my legs felt weak.</p>
<p>I felt a cold touch on my shoulder and glanced down to see Kurt’s hand hovering there.</p>
<p>“You’ll survive this, Green Blood,” he said. He looked at me with narrowed eyes, and his voice was forceful, the words clipped. “Stop shaking and <i>focus</i>.”</p>
<p>He was still enough of himself to know that hurting my pride would get my attention if nothing else would.</p>
<p>I bit my lip until I thought I would break the skin and wrapped my arms around myself, forcing my eyes back to the center of Síora and Eseld’s army. The sisters must be there.</p>
<p>“You still don’t want to fight them?” Kurt asked. He looked straight ahead. His face was set in hard lines, but that told me nothing of what he was thinking. The face he wore before a battle was the same one he had worn when he evaluated Constantin’s and my footwork in the courtyard. Before I could answer, he turned to look at me. “What I mean is, you want to keep them alive.” It wasn’t a question this time.</p>
<p>“Yes,” I answered. It wasn’t the battle itself that had dread slipping down my throat and spreading from my stomach like poisoned wine. It was the impossibility of winning. If we won, Síora and Eseld would die, and it wouldn’t be a victory at all. Not for me. I would add those losses to my count, alongside those who had died at Dorhadgenedu and during the eruptions in the cities. I would count them twice—once, their deaths here, and twice when I returned them to the earth from Tír Anemen. If Siora did not decide to haunt me for the rest of my life, as long as that might be.</p>
<p>But I couldn’t lose, not if it meant that Constantin would die. I couldn’t lose him.</p>
<p>
  <i>Someone has to lose.</i>
</p>
<p>Not if I could think of a better way.</p>
<p>“It was easier when I could slap you around.” Kurt’s rough sigh—purely theatrical, since ghosts had no need of air—jerked me out of my thoughts. He had turned to face me fully, turning his back on the army, and I hadn’t noticed. He waited until I met his eyes. “I know you missed it, so I’ll say it again—you have to win quickly, Green Blood. Numbers are numbers. You’ve got forty spears to two…” He trailed off, waving his hand in the direction of my empty waist. I hadn’t worn my pistol and saber for weeks; I wasn’t entirely sure where I’d left them. “Magic sprites,” Kurt finished. I caught him glancing at the branches on my head.</p>
<p>He meant to make me laugh, and I did smile. “What is the military value of a magic sprite?” I asked, and Kurt snorted.</p>
<p>“We’ll see, I suppose…” I added. “Kurt?”</p>
<p>He sobered quickly and nodded at me. Even jokes had a purpose before a battle, but they weren’t a strategy. “What is it?” he asked.</p>
<p>“I’m going to make them sleep. If I can do it quickly, I can stop the fight before it starts.” I could keep Síora, Eseld, and their warriors asleep, talk to them in their dreams. Convince them… I hadn’t been able to convince Síora of anything in all the times I’d managed to speak to her. Everything I had done had still brought us here.</p>
<p>“If,” Kurt said. “What will you do if that doesn’t work?”</p>
<p>He was right. It was a tenuous plan. If I could make them sleep. If they would listen. I had no new arguments to make. What would I do if they did not back down? Keep them asleep, dreaming in Tír Anemen, for the rest of their lives?</p>
<p>“I don’t want to hurt her.”</p>
<p>“I know, Green Blood.” He looked at me moment longer, while I avoided his eyes, looking past him out at the empty field. Finally, he stepped back to my side and turned to look in the same direction. “I know you don’t,” he repeated. “But if you don’t put your enemy down, she’ll put you down.”</p>
<p>It was an echo of one of his first lessons to me—one of the first that had mattered. Kurt cared for Síora. Watching them talk in Credhenes had only served as more proof of my earlier impression. He had not stopped leaning toward her, reaching for her. But even Kurt knew that Síora and I were unavoidably opposed.</p>
<p>“You were my enemy once,” I said, glancing at him. “You could have killed me, but you chose not to.”</p>
<p>His hand twitched, his fingers half closing then relaxing. He nodded. “I won’t talk you out of trying, if that’s what you want.” He looked at me for a moment before he turned to look over his unit, the men and women who had come with him to overthrow the government of New Sérène and had died with him that day or one by one at the gallows in the days after. They stood silent, listening. But when I turned to look at them over my shoulder, I could see them shifting from foot to foot, their hands on their weapons.</p>
<p>“We aren’t much use,” Kurt said, “but we can distract them for you, give you more time.”</p>
<p>“I won’t ask you to do that, Kurt.”</p>
<p>“You’re not asking; we’re offering.” He held up a hand to stop me when I would have protested again. It passed through my arm like a gust of cold air. “What do you say, Coin Guard? Are we offering?”</p>
<p>As one, the Guards whooped, the sound coming from deep in their chests, and snapped to attention. Where there should have been the sound of metal ringing on metal and boots pounding the earth, there was only silence. But their eagerness was plain in their faces. They seemed to grow brighter, more distinct from each other, as if the thought of a battle brought them back to themselves a little more.</p>
<p>“Kurt—” He looked at me, and his lips were pressed together in the fierce smile I’d only ever seen on his face in the midst of a battle. “If you go out there, I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep you…” Whole? Alive?—but they were long dead. I trailed off; there wasn’t a word for this. Tír Anemen was a still pool that could hold things as amorphous as ghosts and dreams. Compared to this world, the living world was a torrent. How long would they have before the energy of all the living things around them pulled them in a thousand different directions, pulled them to pieces? In moments or minutes, they would return to the earth; I wouldn’t be able to keep them.</p>
<p>This was what I had wanted. I couldn’t shrink away from what had to happen just because the moment had arrived sooner than I’d thought it would.</p>
<p>“We’re already dead, Green Blood.” Kurt waited until I met his eyes before he continued, “Let us choose how we go out.”</p>
<p>In a way, the first time he had died had been easier. I hadn’t known it was coming. And there had been nothing I could do about it. Now, even though he would be going from death into all the living things of the island, it felt as though he was dying again.</p>
<p>I couldn’t hold his eyes. Just as I turned away, his hand came up. I felt his touch, cold on my cheek.</p>
<p>“Lily. This is—”</p>
<p>At the same time, I managed to say through the sudden grief that had closed my throat, “I know. I will. I…”—I took a breath, forced the words out—“I want this for you.”</p>
<p>Kurt smiled and chuckled under his breath. He looked more light-hearted than I had ever seen him. “I got another chance to do things right,” he said. “This is the way it should’ve happened.”</p>
<p>He took a step away from me and drew his sword. The muscles in his lower arm stood out as he hefted its weight, even though it was as ethereal as he was. I didn’t need to turn to know the other guards had done the same. Their weapons made no sound, but the weight of the air and the silence behind me changed again, becoming more pointed, focused on the open door in front of us.</p>
<p>There I made another door between Tír Anemen and the living world, pulling the living world closer until their borders met and merged and a rift opened. White fire sparked and leapt off its edges, and the air that came through was balmy and warm, compared to the air of Tír Anemen. The smells of green grass and rain bloomed around us.</p>
<p>Kurt took the first step back into the world of the living.</p>
<p>“Go,” I said. “Wait for me on the other side.” Without hesitation, the other guards slipped passed me and through the rift. I felt cold touches as they passed, not just the brush of a sleeve or sword but the touch of their hands on my arms and shoulders. If they had been living, most of them wouldn’t have dared to touch a member of the nobility, but these were men and women who had no good luck charms left. And whatever else they saw me as, I could also be a blessing.</p>
<p>The entrance to the tomb filled with a shifting, restless fog as the ghosts gathered there. Their spirits obscured the field beyond, until I couldn’t see more than a few feet outside. Síora’s army was lost in the distance.</p>
<p>I stepped through the rift and let go of my hold on the living world, letting the doorway close behind me. I couldn’t reach Constantin from Tír Anemen; the border between the two worlds severed our connection. After I came through the doorway, my thoughts turned to him. He was sitting beside Slan’s mat when I reached for him, one hand on her shoulder as she breathed raggedly and her head tossed in her sleep. His eyes were closed, and he leaned his head back against the curved wall. He was half in the room and half out in the sunrise.</p>
<p>I couldn’t keep him out of this. I had promised. If I was going to be in danger, he would be, too.</p>
<p>And there wasn’t time for a discussion. I could only share with him what I had decided and hope that he would follow my lead.</p>
<p>Still, it was a relief to reach for him and know that he would be there. He would come.</p>
<p>
  <i>Constantin.</i>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Sorry for the delay in getting this chapter out! I wrote myself into a corner and had to bust through multiple mental walls to make it out. Anyway, if you want to hear about my new Hot Mess™ process of drafting, just let me know. ;)</p>
<p>As always, I'm so grateful for Lyfurn's <a href="https://www.archiveofourown.org/series/1936762">Project Yecht Fradí</a>. They've put an incredible amount of work into translating and understanding the conlang, so go take a look if you haven't already!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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